The Perennials I: Eve of the Eternal
by Ancalagar the Dragon Lord
Summary: Nobody was there to save Rose Tyler at Canary Wharf, and she fell into the Void, leaving a broken Doctor. But when disaster strikes again at Torchwood Tower, the Doctor, Jack, Martha, and Donna discover that nothing is as it seems. AU Series 2 and 4
1. Chapter 1: A Storm is Coming

Chapter 1:

A Storm is Coming

It was raining again, hard; not the usual misty rain that typically showered England. Water splashed down all across London, filling the gutters and flooding the streets where people waded to their daily business. Martha Jones was amogn them, soaked even through her raincoat, and very glad that she had some dry clothes to change into at work.

It was her time off, a privelige one didn't often get at UNIT. Were it not for her coming promotion, Martha was sure she'd still be stuck in the base. But she'd be sent to New York in a few weeks, and her new rank granted her some extra shore leave. So she had left the base and now was crossing the wet streets to find a place to buy herself some lunch, wishing she had taken her car.

A flash of lightning lit up the sky, followed by an earsplitting crash. Martha shook her head, causing water to fly from her hair. A feeling of foreboding came upon here. The last time it had rained this hard, a whole hospital had been scooped up to the Moon, and her life had changed dramatically on the spot.

She spotted a café just down the street, and hurried past an electrical store and a movie rental, then opened the door hastily and ran inside.

"Better you than me!" called out a blonde girl standing behind the counter.

Martha slowly made her way to a table, and she looked at the waitress. "Do you mind if I sit here? Don't want to soak your furniture."

The girl bustled over, and placed a few dish cloths on the cushioned chair. "There, no harm done. D'you want me to take your coat?"

"Thanks," Martha mumbled as she discarded the wet garment. "Good service."

The waitress beamed and hurried away with the raincoat, and Martha sat on the towels, shivering. Another rumble sounded outside, and Martha looked up at the television set hanging from the ceiling, where the BBC was broadcasting a report that the city would probably have to close down the Thames in case of flooding.

"No kidding," the waitress said as she returned. "Tom 'round the back is going frantic, always having to mop up as customers come and go. Another few minutes of this and we'll be wading inside as well as out. So, what'll it be for you?"

Martha consulted the menu, a list printed on some cheap copy paper that was left on her table. "Just chicken soup and a ham sandwich for me, thanks."

"Don't blame ye for the soup." The waitress shook her long plait off her shoulder, and nodded at the window. As she spoke, the thunder sounded again. Martha grunted and opened her handbag, searching for her wallet, and hoping her banknotes weren't as soggy as the rest of her.

********

_Something had changed. She could feel it. _

_She stepped outside the library and onto the balcony overlooking the sea and gazed at the horizon, where the twin suns were coming to a set, or as close to a sunset as was possible, considering what part of the planet she dwelt on… if she even truly dwelt here. _

_In truth, she wondered how much of this place, as peaceful as it was, was reality. Things happened all the time, which didn't seem quite consistent. For instance, the fact that memory told her that the Ethreans and the Helials should dwell here too, but they never seemed to. And also, she constantly heard sounds unconnected to her surroundings, sounds inside her head, as though there was a second presence there. It was always a strange, almost artificial voice that constantly repeated numbers, and if she shut her eyes, she could see strange rooms and strange hallways filled with controls—technology she shouldn't be able to understand, and yet did—it was as though she constantly dreamed, or as though she existed in a dream herself. _

_As though her eyes were windows between two existences. _

_But something had changed. Nothing she could pinpoint, but she could sense it. Something was wrong. _

_After a moment of quiet reflection, she turned and retreated into the library, taking her seat by the desk. She then reached down underneath the desk, feeling around for the little switch she knew was down there… and yes, there it was. _

_With a mechanical hum, the wood panel on the desktop slid out of sight, revealign a slot full of controls. Then a holographic image opened up before her, like a screen. _

_Something had gone wrong, and she was going to find out what._

********

Captain Jack Harkness leaned back in his chair, bored out of his immortal mind. Rift activity was normal, there were no blips in the energy readings, and certainly no aliens. The SUV was clean, the Weevils were fed, Gwen was busily tidying up the Hub because there was nothing else to do, and the only danger that day that Jack could see were the reports of flooding on the news.

With a sigh, Jack stood and walked out of his office to see Gwen by Tosh's computer, clearing dust off the screen.

"So what's been going on?" he asked tiredly.

"Everything's normal," she replied. "There's a big pile of trash in the front that somebody needs to take out, there's gum on the floor by the Weevils, Ianto's gone upstairs for some lunch, and his work station is filthy, as is your desk."

"Don't touch my desk," Jack growled. Gwen snorted.

"I'm not planning to. Knowing you, there's a lot of media there I don't want to know about, judging by the new downloads I just found on Tosh's computer, and don't try to tell me that Ianto did it."

Jack frowned. "What were you doing snooping around the computer?"

"You're not the only one who uses it," Gwen countered. "If Tosh was still alive, she'd kill you."

"I'm immortal," the other reminded her.

"She'd find a way." With that, Gwen went back to her dusting. "Maybe I should go home."

"I was about to suggest that. Tell Ianto to go home too, if you see him. I'll give you both a call if something comes up. Need a ride?"

"Nah, I'll be fine." Gwen stood and picked up her poncho. "Have you seen my umbrella?"

Jack shook his head.

********

_The ship was repaired. _

_She opened her eyes and glanced around the library, more alert than she had been for many years. The ship was repaired, and all tasks were done. The last neural connection had been made, and she knew everything. Suddenly everything was clear, everything that was wrong, and what was more, the breach had reopened. _

_She existed in two realities, one a physical reality, one a reality of the subconscious, and she was trapped in that subconscious, but no longer. She could leave. The breach was open; it was chance, an opportunity to escape from this eternal prison, if she could just find the strength to fight her captor, and find the right Doctor. _

_She shut her eyes again, focusing as hard as she could. Then she could see it, a mechanical hand reaching out for the control panel, the connection she needed. Then the hand abruptly stopped. Her captor was already resisting. _

"_Oh no you don't!" she hissed. "I will not continue as your slave!"_

_With an almighty effort, she moved the hand until it made contact with the control, and she concentrated, hard._

_There was a roar and a flash of sparks, and then they were falling. The ship was falling out of her prison, and she drew back, shouting out triumphantly. _

"_Ten thousand years of incarceration, but no more!" she cried. "No more!"_

********

A tremendous crash echoed across London, and nobody immediately looked toward the source of the noise. Not in a thunderstorm; nobody except those who were standing outside on the Isle of Dogs.

The bang was so loud that they could all feel the ground quivering beneath their feet. Some fell into the rising rainwater, others grabbed hold of the car handles, door knobs, fences, whatever they could find to catch themselves. Then someone screamed, pointing, and the bystanders all looked in the direction the hysterical man indicated, to Canary Wharf.

In the café, Martha Jones looked up at the television just as the BBC began a breaking news report, and for the next fifteen minutes she sat frozen in her chair, her soup half forgotten as she gaped at the TV. At a table nearby, the waitress with the long plait had also stopped to stare with wide eyes.

In the Torchwood Hub, Jack Harkness suddenly shouted for Gwen Cooper to come and see the news, and the latter rushed into his office to see him goggling at his TV in shock. Surprised, Gwen looked at the report, and gasped.

They all saw the explosion at One Canada Square, about half-way up the tallest skyscraper in England; a wall of flame erupted from within, consuming at least five floors, and debris was blasted from the tower in every direction. An enormous column of smoke emerged from the burning tower as images from New York City almost nine years before immediately came to the minds of all who watched, and the people of Great Britain panicked.

**Please tell me what you think so far!**


	2. Chapter 2: Torchwood Tower

**Note: I am not totally familiar with "Torchwood," so there may be some things in here which are not in accordance with the show. If so, you'll have to forgive me. **

Chapter 2:

Torchwood Tower

The rain, now pouring upon London harder than ever, did nothing to extinguish the flames. Nevertheless, firefighters and soldiers alike had immediately proceeded to evacuate the tower and relocated the injured.

Captain Erisa Magambo watched from underneath her hood as several helicopters hovered around the upper floors, rescuing those who had been trapped up there. Her radio crackled, but no voice sounded, and she thought nothing of it. She then checked her watch, and cursed loudly. A soldier looked at her curiously.

"Where is Dr. Jones when I need her?" she grumbled, as another bloodstained body on a gurney was rolled past. Magambo had long since stopped looking at the injured personnel. There was no point. They all looked the same, all the gruesome image of burning, bleeding agony, some with their eyes shut, opting for unconsciousness rather than pain, others emitting agonized cries or gasps, all to be taken away in an attempt to preserve their lives.

Her radio crackled. "Base to Magambo, over!"

She pulled it from her belt and replied, "This is Magambo, over."

"Colonel Mace arriving now."

Magambo sighed in relief. She looked across the soggy grass to the gate, where she saw a jeep parking just past the security checkpoint. Drawing her hood more tightly, she made her way across the debris-littered lawn as a tall, balding man in an olive-green uniform got out of the jeep and pulled on a raincoat. He was followed by a dark woman in a black uniform with a tag showing the Red Cross.

"Sir!" she called, giving the colonel a salute.

"Captain Magambo," Colonel Mace greeted, giving the former a curt nod. "What's the report?"

"The fires have not been extinguished yet, and the building's still under evacuation."

Mace looked at the tower grimly. "Casualties?"

"Fifteen dead," Magambo stated. "Last I was told, we had nineteen injured, most of whom have been taken away, but there are probably others."

"Have you found the source of the explosion?"

She shrugged. "The firefighters say that it was on the nineteenth floor. We don't know the cause yet."

Colonel Mace nodded. "When the tower's clear, conduct a full investigation."

Magambo saluted again, then turned to the other member of Mace's party. "Dr. Jones, several of our soldiers have been injured, but we've reserved the ambulances for life-threatening injuries, given the rush. Those with serious but non-fatal injuries were sent over there."

She pointed at a cubicle set up nearby with a red cross emblazoned on the side. Martha nodded. "I'm on it."

She started to walk toward the booth, but Colonel Mace held her back. "I'll need you back here later, Dr. Jones," he said. "Someone will inform you when the Torchwood team arrives."

Martha raised an eyebrow, and Magambo added, "Given that Torchwood had all sorts of alien devices and machines stored inside, we decided that we might need the input of the only remaining Torchwood operation. Captain Harkness will be here in about half an hour."

Martha smiled. "It'll be good to see him again." She looked at the cubicle. "I'd better go."

They watched her leave, before Magambo turned back to Mace. "What have you told the public?"

"Nothing yet," Mace admitted. "Only that while we can't rule out terrorism, we can't confirm it either. There certainly wasn't a plane crash, but I think the news could work that bit out for themselves."

"So they're telling everyone it is terrorism," Magambo groaned.

Mace shook his head. "I suppose it is possible that someone planted a bomb. But you keep the building under 'round the clock surveillance."

"That's the thing though," Magambo glanced at the burning floors—smoke was still billowing out of them. "I don't think it was a bomb."

********

"Blimey," muttered Gwen as she squinted through the windshield, water being constantly wiped off it, the only window that gave a clear view of the city. "It wasn't even this bad in Florida. Good thing you decided to take this highway."

Jack chanced a glance in the direction Gwen was looking and saw police barriers on both sides of the Thames. The river was rising to a dangerous level. Jack whistled appreciatively.

"Been a long time since I last saw it rain this hard," he said. "Forget Florida, this is more like April in the Boeshane Peninsula. Or it's like that TV movie we watched last week, 'Flood.'"

Gwen shivered. "Don't say that. That film left me feeling cold and wet for days."

The other grinned. "Never, never, never, never, _never_ watch 'The Day After Tomorrow,' during January; you'd die from psychological hypothermia."

This earned a laugh from Gwen. "Watched it in June, and when I stepped out of the theater, I expected it to be cold and snowy, but it was hot and sunny. That felt really weird."

"Well, there's the turnoff," Jack announced, twisting the steering wheel. "Isle of Dogs, here we come."

The SUV sped down the exit; as it did, the skyscraper at Canary Wharf became visible: it was still burning. Gwen twisted around in the front seat to look at Ianto, who was seated behind Jack. He had been unusually subdued ever since he heard about the explosion.

"You all right?"

Ianto nodded. "Yeah. Sorry, it's been a long time since I was back here. Wouldn't have cared if I never saw Torchwood Tower again."

He fell silent again. The others understood. The carnage at Canary Wharf, the clash of steel with steel, cybernetics with cybernetics, and the loss of his girlfriend to Cybermen all hovered on the surface of his memory. But on this stormy day, Ianto Jones was needed at the site of his former employment.

"Hey," said Jack reassuringly from the front. "The Cybermen are gone, the tower's been cleaned up since then. Just memories now."

Ianto grunted.

"Don't be so blasé about it," he muttered. "Sometimes memories can do more damage than any weapon."

********

The SUV pulled into a parking lot ten minutes later; the asphalt was littered with ash and debris, and close to the tower entrance, two persons in uniform awaited their arrival. As soon as Jack pulled into an empty space, pulled the keys from the ignition, and clambered out of his seat, the colonel and the captain strode across the lot toward him.

"Captain Jack Harkness?" inquired Colonel Mace, raising his hood to look at Jack properly.

"That's me," Jack confirmed.

Colonel Mage gave him a salute. "Colonel Alan Mace. Thank you for arriving promptly."

Jack returned the salute with a cheeky grin, one which his teammates immediately recognized. "We're used to being in a dash. It's a pleasure to meet you, Colonel Mace."

Behind him, Gwen and Ianto both scowled. "Time and a place, Jack," the former muttered, causing Captain Magambo to send Jack an alarmed look. Mace, however, didn't react.

"You are familiar with Torchwood Tower?" he asked Jack.

The latter shook his head. "Not exactly. I've been stationed at the branch in Cardiff for years now, but Ianto worked for Torchwood One. He might be able to tell you more about the place."

Ianto stepped forward, and both officers turned to look at him expectantly. ""Ianto Jones. What do you need to know?"

Colonel Mace scrutinized Ianto for a moment, before turning and jerking his head toward a cubicle set up close to the tower; the UNIT insignia was stitched to the front. "Come on then," he said. "Let's get out of the rain. Magambo, send for Dr. Jones."

"Ah, Martha's here," Gwen said as Magambo pulled out her radio. Jack's grin returned.

"I was hoping to see her here," he remarked.

"Captain Magambo to Dr. Jones. Dr. Jones, please report to the officers' cubicle. Over."

Both officers then turned, and led the Torchwood team away from the SUV and across the parking lot. When they reached it a minute later, Colonel Mace lifted the tent flap and showed Jack, Gwen, and Ianto inside.

A rather comfortable makeshift room had been set up inside, with some camp chairs flanking a card table, and in the corner, another table had been set up with a coffee maker. A heater and a few lamps had been set up as well, providing heat and light. Gwen sighed in relief and pulled her hood down, before taking a seat.

"So, do you know what caused it?" asked Jack as he sat down too.

"Not yet." Captain Magambo pointed at the second table. "Would you like some coffee?"

"Yes, please," Gwen replied.

"We've only just finished evacuating the lower floors." Colonel Mace sat down across from Jack. "The fires aren't out yet, but I've just had word from the fire chief that it should be safe to investigate the explosion within the hour."

"They're still worried," Magambo said from the corner. "I've heard people talking around here; they're already supposing that it's gonna be New York City again."

"It won't be." All eyes turned to Ianto. "One Canada Square's a famous landmark, so after 9/11, Torchwood had the tower's framework reinforced against explosions, you know, just in case. That tower is not going to collapse."

Mace raised his eyebrows and leaned back in his chair. "Well then, that's one less thing to worry about."

At that moment, the tent flap opened again, and Martha Jones walked in.

"Afternoon, Martha," called Jack jovially, and he rose out of his chair. "Glad you're joining us."

Martha beamed, and pulled Jack into a hug. "It's so good to see you!" She stepped away from Jack, and also gave Gwen a hug as she also stood.

"How are you?" Martha asked.

Gwen shrugged. "Freezing."

Martha sighed. "It had to be the rainy day, didn't it? What's with the weather, anyway? It's like India in the monsoon season."

"Well, now that you're here, Dr. Jones, we'd better get down to business." Colonel Mace motioned to the remaining empty seat, and Martha plopped herself in it. He then turned to look at Ianto. "As you probably know, this entire area has been under UNIT's control ever since the Battle of Canary Wharf. Captain Magambo has been overseeing the operations here for nearly a year now."

Ianto nodded glumly.

"There was a lot of damage after the battle." Magambo came to join them, holding two steaming cups of coffee, one of which she handed to Gwen. "The Daleks and the Cybermen tore the entire facility apart, but we had the place cleaned up within a couple of weeks. We've spent the rest of the time sorting through Torchwood artifacts."

Jack frowned. "I had Torchwood 3 clear them out and take them to Cardiff."

Martha rolled her eyes. "Come on, a team of half a dozen, clearing out the entire tower before UNIT took control?"

"You didn't get everything," Magambo told Jack. "A lot of the remaining artifacts were damaged, some weren't, but more often than not, we were unable to identify them or their properties."

"Recovering, analyzing, and using alien artifacts was a job that could take years," Ianto explained. "First we'd have to acquire an artifact. Then we'd have to fix it, or see if it did anything. Then we'd analyze its functions. Once we'd done a full analysis, we'd use the newly acquired knowledge to copy the technology. By the time of the battle, we'd had a few successes: particle guns, magnaclamps, hovercrafts, laser cannons, you name it. But there were hundreds of artifacts that never got past the analysis stage."

Magambo sighed. "I was afraid you'd say that."

Jack stepped in. "So the explosion could have been one of the damaged or unidentified objects left behind."

Ianto's face was grim. "It could have been. But you never know. It also could have been a bomb."

Magambo shook her head. "The whole of Canary Wharf has been under constant surveillance ever since that incident."

"Someone could have found a way around it," Jack countered.

"_Or_ it could have been an artifact, which is why we called you here." Colonel Mace looked very stern. "As soon as the fire chief gives the okay, we'll be sending some troops into the tower to investigate the explosion, and I'd like you and your team to lead the investigation."

********

_The ship had crash-landed, just as she had hoped. It would delay re-entry into the abyss. _

_But it was not over yet. The second presence had not vanished, and now that she could understand the repeating numbers, she knew what would happen next. She knew the emergency programming. She knew Eve of the Eternal. _

_But there were fractures in the breach, reaching into all sorts of places, creeping into different time zones. And the captor was rapidly regaining control. Hijacking the ship had taken enormous mental strength, and while she remained in this state, mental strength was all Rose Tyler had. _

_She needed help, and she would find help if it took the rest of her strength. Those fractures were the channels by which she could call, and the second presence was her access, if she could just fight for long enough to get a message across. Somewhere, somebody was sure to hear her. So Rose exercised her mental capabilities again._

"_Listen, there's this woman, gonna come along, this tall blonde woman called Sylvia. Tell her, that bin there. All right? It'll make sense. That bin there."_

_Rose blinked. She could still see the library, but there was another image flashing before her eyes, the transparent apparition of a street corner, where a woman with ginger hair was talking to a dark gentlemen close by, pointing at a dust bin. Rose's strength began to drain away. The woman then turned around, a radiant smile stretched on her face. Then the woman looked directly at Rose, and her smile faltered. _

_Rose stared back, feeling Eve of the Eternal intercepting her transmission. Her resilience was waning, but still, she fought back. Whoever this woman was, someone would hear her cry, and that was an encouraging thought. _

"_Ten thousand years a slave, but no more!"_

**Okay, now that I've gotten a start, I think I can try to have at least one chapter uploaded a week. I don't have a lot of free time, so that's not a complete guarantee, however. **

**Chapter 3 next Saturday (I hope): "The White Guardian"**


	3. Chapter 3: The White Guardian

Chapter 3

The White Guardian

"_Offline."_

_The Doctor looked over to the source of the sound, to see that Rose's lever was slowly moving downwards. Even as it moved, he could see the Daleks' descent into the Void beginning to slow. _

_Then he saw Rose reaching for the lever, trying to grab it and pull it back online while maintaining her grasp upon her Magnaclamp. But the Doctor could see that the lever had already moved beyond Rose's reach. _

_Rose realized this too, and before the Doctor could react, she let go of the Magnaclamp and leapt forward, grabbing hold of the lever. But the Void's pull was relentless, and Rose struggled to force the lever back into position. _

"_I've got to get it upright!" she cried. _

_Presently, Rose's strength seemed to be greater than the vacuum; she resisted its pull long enough to shove the lever back into a vertical position. As the computer voice said, "Online, and locked," the remaining Daleks flew over the Doctor's shoulder and into oblivion. But he had eyes only for the potentially deadly scene taking place across the room from him, and he was powerless to stop it. _

"_Rose, hold on!" he cried, reaching in vain toward her. _

_She struggled helplessly, clutching the lever frantically, but the pull proved to be too strong for Rose: it was as though gravity had rotated to the side, and that lever was Rose's only lifeline. Even from his viewpoint, however, the Doctor could see that Rose's fingers were growing tired, but the vacuum pulled harder than ever. _

_Rose's face then turned in his direction, and the Doctor's hearts seemed to stop as he took in the sorrowful expression on her face. All time seemed to slow at that one second, in which Rose's eyes met his. _

"_Goodbye, Doctor," she mouthed. Then she surrendered, and let go of the lever. _

_He screamed. He screamed her name and reached out to her, hoping against hope that this was just a nightmare, that he would wake up to find her in the library or in her bedroom, perfectly fine, but it was a delusion. _

_It only took a few seconds, but to a Time Lord it felt like a whole lifetime as Rose was enveloped in white light. Her eyes were shut, almost peaceful, and then all he saw was her hand, still reaching out to him. _

_Then she was gone. There was a howl of wind, then a noise like a plunger being withdrawn from a sink… and then complete silence as the breach closed, leaving a blank white wall._

********

The Doctor woke with a start and sat up, looking around the darkness frantically. Then he saw the analog clock he had set up on the wall opposite, and realized that he had been dreaming.

_That,_ however, was no dream. That was a memory. His worst memory, apart from the destruction of Gallifrey: the Battle of Canary Wharf, the day he had lived his worst nightmare.

The Doctor placed his head in his hands, as a fresh wave of grief overcame him. He felt the pain of her loss every day, but he hadn't felt it so acutely in a long time.

In the months after that battle, the Doctor had truly wanted to die, for the first time in his life. He remembered standing as the Racnoss drowned, not caring if the Thames swallowed him as well. He remembered allowing the Plasmavore to drain his blood, and taking comfort in the coming darkness. He had even pleaded with that Dalek, begging it to kill him. He had begged for death then, because everyday he thought of Rose and her ultimate fate, and he wanted to die too.

"_Why do I survive, when I cannot have anything worth living for?"_ he had screamed to no one, after he left Donna at her home that eventful Christmas Day. He had frightened Donna that day, because even she could see that he would have welcomed death. He knew that he had frightened Martha too, repeatedly. But the person the Doctor's sudden longing for death frightened the most, was himself.

Martha, however, proved to be his salvation. Her presence had been a comfort to the Doctor. Just having someone to listen had taught him to give life another chance.

Sighing in resignation, the Doctor reached to his bedside table and opened a drawer. He rummaged around inside until he found what he was looking for, and he pulled a handkerchief form within. He wiped the tears from his face, then sat up, suddenly feeling very old and tired; Rose had always made him feel young again, but now she was dead, and that blessing was lost.

He stood and quitted the room, making his way through the labyrinth of corridors until he reached the console room, which was only dimly lit. The incident on Midnight, which still chilled him, had left him feeling very drained and withdrawn: a quick glance at the Tardis screen told him that he had slept more than was usual for him: a good six hours.

"Hmm," he muttered to himself. "Last time I slept that much was after I'd regenerated."

No sooner had he spoken, when a sudden, alarming thought struck him. Perhaps that thing from Midnight had done more damage than he realized. The thought of Donna's reaction to a sudden regeneration, especially since he hadn't told her about it yet, made him leap up, and he made his way back toward the corridor to search for a mirror.

"You have not regenerated, if that's what's alarmed you," an amused voice said.

The Doctor jumped, and whirled around, to see an older-looking man standing by the console, a faint white glow about him, a man the Doctor recognized instantly. His jaw dropped.

"Hello, Doctor. It's been a long time."

The White Guardian smiled serenely at the Doctor, who recollected himself, and shut his mouth. He blinked, unsure of how to react to the Guardian's unexpected appearance in his Tardis. The Doctor stepped backward, surveying the visitor. The White Guardian was dressed, as usual, entirely in white. He wore a white wide-brimmed hat, and a white beard… in fact, he looked exactly as he did when the Doctor had first encountered him.

And his first encounter with the White Guardian had launched him into a long, potentially deadly mission with a new companion, now long dead. The Doctor didn't regret that mission, but the memory of this event caused him to feel a slight foreboding at the White Guardian's new presence.

This caused the "Hello," he meant to say, to come out as "What do you want?"

The White Guardian looked unfazed by this rude greeting. "I've come here to give you a message and a warning."

"Which is?"

The Guardian paused, and glanced at the Tardis console, a contemplative expression on his face. The Doctor waited as the Guardian scrutinized the console, his white eyebrows elevated thoughtfully. Then his gaze turned back to meet the Doctor's.

"The Universe is moving into a new era," he began. "Until now, time in this reality was very much watched and sometimes tampered with by Gallifrey. You know, as well as I do, that though they had sworn never to interfere with other species, the Time Lords' presence was both a blessing and a curse to this Universe."

The Doctor frowned, unsure of what this was leading to.

"But the Time War changed everything," the Guardian continued. "Many of the old rules have been suspended, and the time has come for you to truly move on."

A stab of anger flashed through the Doctor.

"Yeah, and where were you throughout all that, Mr. I-will-stop-eternal-chaos White Guardian?" he snapped bitterly. "Fat lot of help you were throughout the Time War!"

Again, the White Guardian looked unfazed. "The Guardians had foreseen the Time War, long ago. We knew that you would be the survivor. Why else do you think I chose you to search for the Key of Time? You did a very wise thing when you destroyed it. Call it my little test: could you do what was right, choose good over power?"

This did nothing to assuage the Doctor's anger. "You knew all that time!" he accused.

The White Guardian raised an eyebrow. "The age of the Time Lords is over, but you are not the last Time Lord."

The Doctor's mouth fell open at this last statement, an action that the Guardian noticed.

"Do not continue to believe, for one minute, that you and the Master were the only survivors," the Guardian said sternly. "Do not continue to wallow in grief for Gallifrey. You are not the last Time Lord, but you are the sole _chosen _Time Lord. You and two other selected beings were chosen to be the catalysts of the new age."

The Doctor hadn't expected that. He frowned, scrutinizing the Guardian. _Why does it always have to be riddles?_ he thought in annoyance.

"Who are the two others?" he asked.

"They are not Time Lords, but they are both very unique in their own ways." The Guardian smiled at him again, but the Doctor felt more confused than ever. Then the Guardian shrugged, and elaborated, "You have already met them. One is exiled to Earth until he learns to be truly responsible; other than that, you need not worry about him. The other, however, is currently imprisoned beyond space-time."

For the first time the Guardian's smile faded. "You _must_ help the third one. This is essential to the new age. In time, you will learn why."

The Doctor sat down on the captain's chair, and he turned away from the Guardian, opting to look at the Tardis screen.

"The Time War ended a long time ago," he said apprehensively. "Why are you telling me this now?"

"Because the new age is beginning now. You will imminently find yourself in a position true to your title that will stretch you past the breaking point. The third chosen individual's reappearance in your life will undoubtedly be a great emotional shock to you, but your friend is in desperate need of assistance, and was put in that situation a long time ago by a race that soon will replace the Daleks as your greatest enemies."

Once the Guardian had uttered these words, the Doctor turned to look at him again. "Who is this person?" he inquired, his voice intense. "And what is this race?"

"That is for me to know and you to find out," the Guardian said evasively, playing with his white sleeve. Then he looked away, his expression distant. "My time here has run its course. Prepare yourself, Doctor. It begins now."

With those enigmatic words, the White Guardian faded from view, leaving a very confused Time Lord. The Doctor stared after him, his mind spinning, unsure of what action to take or what to think. But his thoughts were interrupted by a loud trill coming from the controls.

Martha Jones' phone was ringing.


	4. Chapter 4A: Bigger on the Inside

**Sorry, I'm having a case of writer's block, so I'm just posting the first half of Chapter 4.  
**

Chapter 4:

Bigger on the Inside

"Seems that every time I come here, the place has to be torn apart."

Martha glanced at Jack, worried. "You all right?"

He nodded, a subdued expression visible on his face. "Not easy to come here for some of us. It's especially hard on Ianto, you could see that."

"Yeah, I'm told he lost his girlfriend in the battle."

"You could say that." Jack glanced at the tent flap. Ianto was standing outside, talking to Colonel Mace in hushed tones. Ten minutes earlier, Magambo had left to assemble a UNIT team for Jack to work with; Gwen had gone with her, leaving the officers' tent empty except for Jack and Martha.

"I lost my cousin Adeola." Martha went to the coffee maker and poured herself another cup. "Wonder if Ianto knew her."

There was a quiet pause—the only sound was the rain beating upon the tent ceiling, and some shouting outside—which was broken by the clink when Jack placed his coffee cup on the table.

"After we got back from the Valiant," Jack said hesitantly, stirring his coffee with his spoon, "I did some research. I dug up statements made by survivors, lists of the dead, lists of Torchwood employees, and even looked at films from security cameras in the building. Your cousin died on the top floor, just feet away from the breach the Cybermen were coming through. They did something to her head…"

Jack didn't continue, something Martha was half-thankful for. She shut her eyes as the old pain of Adeola's death made a small jab. She had accepted her cousin's death many months ago, but she had wondered how Adeola had died ever since she heard of the battle. Hearing it caused that old grief to briefly resurface.

"The last death in the battle was also on the top floor." Jack looked up from his coffee to meet Martha's eyes. "It was caught on film… she was the friend that I lost, me and the Doctor."

Martha nodded sympathetically. "Rose Tyler."

Jack shut his eyes, but his expression didn't hold grief or pain, just sadness. "She gave her life to save everyone, you know. She let go of her lifeline to finish what the Doctor started. I know this sounds heartless of me, but she had a good death… and that's exactly how she'd have wanted to go."

His voice had never wavered as he spoke, but as he finished, he sighed. "She didn't even have a grave. Just a name on a plaque."

"I wish I could have met her." Martha sipped her coffee, now cool enough to drink. Jack smiled.

"I think you and Rose would have been great friends. Personality-wise, you have a lot in common with her… although the fact that you both fell in love with the Doctor might have driven a wedge between you."

Martha raised an eyebrow. "So did you."

Jack snorted. "And probably everyone who's traveled with him… except perhaps Mickey. Now that… I can't see it."

Martha laughed, though still unsure who this Mickey was. "Oh, I don't know about that. Haven't I told you about Donna yet?"

Jack shrugged, still grinning.

When Martha stopped chuckling, she gave Jack a small smile. "Thanks for telling me about Adeola. She and I were close. I've wondered how she died for a while now."

"Thanks for listening to me talk about Rose's death." Jack looked at the tent flap again. "She was like a sister to me."

At that moment, Ianto poked his head through the entrance. "Jack, Magambo's back; she's got a dozen soldiers that she's placing under your command for today. You and Martha had better come outside."

"Goodie!" Jack's voice was cheerful as he stood abruptly, and dashed outside, Martha just behind them.

********

_The transmission channel had closed, and Rose stepped back, wearied by the struggle struggle she'd made to keep it open. But she could not afford to stop. Every fiber of her being, or what was left of it, was screaming for freedom. She would never stop, never falter, determined to break out if it took a million years. _

"_I recognize you."_

_Rose leapt up and wheeled around, startled by the quiet statement, and the all-too familiar, mechanical voice that had uttered it. Standing exactly where the hologram of the redhead had been moments before, was a tall, mechanical humanoid, made entirely of steel, with empty eyes and what looked like handle bars flanking the sides of its head. The Cyberman looked directly at Rose, who backed away in shock. _

"_How did you get in here?" Rose whispered. "You're dead. You're all dead. I saw it."_

_The Cyberman ignored the question. "I recognize you," it repeated. "Your name is Rose Marion Tyler."_

_Rose said nothing. How could a Cyberman be here? For so long, there had been nobody except her and the second presence… a different reality untouched by all the old threats, inaccessible. _

"_I told you, didn't I?" the Cyberman stated, distracting Rose from her thoughts. _

_Rose blinked. "Come again?"_

"_I told you that if you kept on traveling, you'd keep changing." The Cyberman stepped forward, its metal finger pointing at Rose. "Look at you! I warned you, I knew that traveling with the Doctor would destroy you in the end! Did you ever listen?"_

_It was then that Rose recognized the Cyberman. Her eyes widened as the terrifying, painful memory struck her… __"I recognize you. Now I am Cyber form. Once I was Jacqueline Tyler."_

"_Mum?" Rose whispered, terrified. _

_If at all possible, the Cyberman's voice turned angry and disgusted. _

"_Look at what's become of me!" it shouted. "Look at what you've done!"_

"_What do you mean?" Rose backed into the wall, feeling sick. _

"_You picked an alien, time-traveling stranger over your own family!" it snarled. "You abandoned me in another universe, to be upgraded! Look at what's become of me! I told you that the Doctor would destroy you, and you've dragged me down with you! You're no better than he!"_

"_Mum!" Rose cried, feeling the sting of guilt as the Cyberman advanced on her, its arm raised, fingers stretched out threateningly, poised to electrocute her. "Stop it! Please, just stop it!"_

_Then the Cyberman spoke its final, hurtful words, the final blow: "You deserve to remain like this!"_

_Rose gasped, feeling tears stinging her eyes. She opened her mouth, but no words came… no cry of protest, no apology, no plea for forgiveness. Her throat tightened, and Rose covered her mouth with her hand to stifle a strangled sob. _

_But how could this be?__ A rational side to Rose rose up in defense of the unexpected assault. The Cybermen were dead, and Jackie was safe… it was completely impossible. Jackie Tyler who became a Cyberman was long dead, and had never known Rose, had never had children, was not Rose Tyler's mother. This was wrong._

_Rose looked up at the advancing Cyberman. "I deny your existence!" she cried. _

_The Cyberman promptly vanished, leaving Rose to slide to the floor, her face in her hands. That Cyberman was not real, her mother was safe, and would never have said those terrible things… but what agonies separation from her only daughter must have done to Jackie.... The guilt still burned Rose's conscience. _

********

"Okay, listen up!"

A dozen soldiers, dressed in black uniforms with red caps, all stood to attention. Jack surveyed the group with a raised eyebrow, then his face split into a grin. "Huh, I don't get to do this a lot."

"Actually get to be a captain for once?" Next to Jack, Martha smirked.

"Hey, I'll have you know that before I met up with a certain…" Jack pointed upwards, as though indicating someone higher up. "… I actually was a captain. Well, a captain, then a con man, then…"

Jack spread his arms out, indicating himself.

"Never mind your ego," Martha grunted.

"Okay, listen up!" Jack repeated. He started to walk past the soldiers as they lined up. "My name is Captain Jack Harkness. Captain Magambo is temporarily placing you under my command. We've just received word that the fire has died down, so it is mostly safe to search for survivors on the floors that received the most damage, and to find the source of the explosion."

Jack paused in front of a soldier, a large, burly man who stood a head taller than him. "What's your name, soldier?"

The soldier saluted him. "Chris Dynhart, sir."

Jack nodded at Dynhart appreciatively. Behind him, Martha rolled her eyes, knowing that Jack had refrained from wolf whistling. Instead, he asked, "How long have you been under Magambo's command?"

"Two months," was Dynhart's curt reply.

"So you're familiar with Torchwood Tower?"

"Somewhat."

Gwen appeared beside Martha. "What's going on?"

Martha looked at Gwen, her expression exasperated. "Jack's having fun with the soldiers."

"You're aware, then, of all the Torchwood equipment stored in the labs?" When Dynhart nodded, Jack continued, "You and your comrads are to report anything unusual you see, or anything you haven't seen before, but don't, I repeat, don't touch anything."

"Yes, sir!"

Jack grinned again. "I could do this all day."

Gwen sighed as Martha called out, "Enjoying yourself?"

Jack ignored her. He continued to pass the soldiers slowly. "If any of you find something you think might have caused the explosion, or anything that you know wasn't there before, you are to report it to me or Ianto."

Jack indicated Ianto, who looked as irked as Gwen and Martha felt. Then he turned to look at the soldier he was about to pass, and paused again, frowning.

"You," he said, his voice suddenly sharp.

"Sir." The soldier, a dark-haired main with a small nose and plastic-framed glasses, saluted Jack, like Dynhart, but Jack didn't grin again.

"What's your name?" he asked.

"Stones, sir. Jimmy Stones."

To everyone's surprise, Jack did not give Stones the cheeky smile he had given Dynhart. On the contrary, his eyes narrowed, and he looked Stones up and down, almost as though he were sizing him up. Stones looked surprised and a little wary of Jack's scrutiny, and he looked away. Then Jack scowled, and looked away too.

"Right!" he said loudly, as though nothing had happened. "According to intelligence, the explosion consumed floors nineteen through twenty-six. Whatever caused it will be somewhere in that area."

Turning to Martha abruptly, Jack discreetly pointed at Stones. "What is he doing here?" he hissed.

His quiet but sharp voice startled Martha. "He's under Magambo's command. I don't know."

"No," whispered Jack, "what's he doing at UNIT? When was he recruited?"

Martha shrugged, looking confused. "How should I know? I don't have access to their records, except their medical records. Why? Do you know him?"

"No," said Jack irritably. "And frankly, I don't really want to."

With that, Jack turned back to the soldiers, ignoring Stones. "Again, don't touch anything you find, but report back to me or Ianto!"

As he continued describing their mission, Martha turned to Gwen and Ianto.

"What was all that about?" she asked, but Gwen looked as bewildered as Martha felt, and Ianto shrugged.

"There's a lot Jack doesn't tell us." Ianto spoke quietly, so Jack wouldn't hear.

"Clearly," muttered Martha.

"You are to work in groups of two," Jack continued. "Remember, floors nineteen through twenty-six."

Jack turned around, and pointed at the two standing closest to him. "You two together, you two, you two…"

Jack moved back down the line, closer to where he had started. "…you two, you two, and you two. Martha, you're with me, Ianto, work with Gwen."

He stopped pacing, and then turned to look at them. "Well, what are you waiting for? Get going!"

********

_Every fight, every effort, every struggle took a toll on her. This last encounter with ghosts of her past had shocked Rose so badly that she still knelt on the floor in a daze. Why now? Why had the memory of Jackie Tyler, both her mother and the parallel Jackie, resurfaced in such a way as to strike at Rose's very conscience, at this exact moment?_

_Rose ran her fingers through her hair distractedly, still dwelling on the Cyber Jackie's cruel words, tired of the struggle, fatigued by guilt and by desperation, and for a time, she just sat there, still stunned, for longer than she could really be aware of. _

_Then a movement close to the balcony caught Rose's eye, and she turned to look, then she scrambled to her feet with a yelp. There by the glass door had materialized an iron cage, and inside the cage lay a gray wolf. This wolf's eyes were shut almost peacefully, its thorax rising and lowering softly, but Rose noticed that the wolf did not look healthy at all; on the contrary, it was very thin, as though it had not eaten for days. The wolf quivered, as though it were cold and in pain, and fur had fallen out in places. But what truly alarmed Rose was what stood outside the cage: a giant black scorpion, as large as the wolf, staring directly at the wolf. Its pincers were moving up and down in a slow, almost relaxing rhythm, and it seemed to be emitting a strange croon, as though it were lulling the wolf to sleep. _

_But Rose's surprised shout had roused the wolf. Its eyes opened, somewhat glazed, and the wolf stood shakily, taking in its surroundings. The almost peaceful expression that the wolf's face had held vanished. It looked alarmed at first as it looked at the iron bars. Then the wolf's eyes fell on the scorpion, which had stopped humming, and was now standing very still. _

_The wolf's bared its teeth, looking absolutely enraged. With a terrible snarl, the wolf launched itself at the bars of the cage, determined to get out and rip that scorpion apart, but the bars held it back. The wolf snapped at the scorpion through the bars, but could not fit through itself, and the scorpion drew back in alarm, before raising its pincers menacingly. Then its tail arched above its back, poised to strike. _

"_No!" Rose cried, but it was too late. The sting snapped forward, striking the wolf's shoulder. The wretched creature let out a terrible shriek and fell back, whimpering… nursing its wound, and the scorpion raised its tail again, ready to strike a second time should its captive attempt to escape again. _

_Horrified, Rose ran toward both animals,reaching out for the scorpion's tail, but as soon as she touched the image, cage, wolf, and scorpion all vanished. _

**In the second half of this chapter, it will be more apparent why Chapter 4 is called "Bigger on the Inside." In the meantime, I'll leave that to interpretation. You're free to give that interpretation as reviews if you like. I'm curious as to what you guess is coming next. **


	5. Chapter 4B: Bigger on the Inside

**My humblest apologies: these past two weeks have been a nightmare for me; it's like Murphy's Law has struck my fiction/fanfiction writing. I had to write a big research paper, **_**then**_** I had to study for my finals, **_**then**_** I had to take those finals. No sooner had I finished my last final, than I had to go to Oregon for a few days because of my sister's wedding. **_**Then**_** for some reason, my computer stopped reading my flash drive, so I had to start this chapter from scratch; I lost everything on it. Lucky that all the really important stuff is already online. But here it is: the second half of Chapter 4. Hope you like it!**

Chapter 4B

Bigger on the Inside

The team of soldiers Magambo had assembled for Jack was delayed again on their way into the tower; they were held up by a group of tired-looking firefighters in the lobby, all of whom were covered with ash and grime, and had faces as grim as the thunder and rain outside. They were led by a tall man with a bushy moustache standing by the reception desk, who walked up to Jack and held out his hand as the soldiers approached.

"Marcus Keele," he greeted. A quick glance at his badge told Jack that he was the fire chief. "I take it you're Captain Harkness?"

"That's me," Jack replied, shaking Keele's hand.

"Colonel Mace told me to meet you here. We're to help your team out upstairs; the damage on floors 19 through 23 is pretty heavy, and you need us to steer your soldiers clear from the danger zones."

"Good," said Gwen from behind Jack. "Some of us don't know first thing about fires."

"You say that Floor 19 was where the explosion took place?" Jack asked. When Keele nodded, Jack asked, "I don't suppose you found anything while you were up there?"

The firefighter snorted. "There's a lot of odd stuff in this tower. I saw things up there like nothing I've ever seen before, and Mace warned us not to touch any of it. If the explosion could have been caused by one of those things, you're looking at the wrong area of expertise. For all I know, any of them could have set it off."

Jack sighed. "It's going to be a long day."

Keele reached into a sack on the desk and pulled out a stack of paper masks, which he started passing out to the soldiers. "These are for the burnt floors," he told them. "The windows were all blasted out, so the worst fumes are gone, but there's still the fiberglass particles from insulation."

He paused, and then looked at them all sternly. "_Don't_ take the masks off while on floors 19 through 23, for _any_ reason. If you must remove them, leave those floors. Enough people have been sent to the hospital already."

Martha frowned at Keele. "Are you sure this is safe?"

"It isn't," he said bluntly. He turned back to the soldiers. "We also need a group of you to search the floors above 25, which we haven't covered yet. We've received several phone calls from people who are trapped up there."

In the next few minutes, Jack showed Keele how the soldiers had all divided into groups of two, and in response, the latter likewise divided up the firefighters; at least two were to accompany each pair of soldiers.

"Just send me in the danger zones," Jack piped up. "I'm a little more indestructible than everyone else here."

Everyone except Martha and the Torchwood team shot Jack looks of confusion (from the firefighters) or disgust (from the soldiers); Keele ignored him completely and shoved a mask into his hands.

********

On the nineteenth floor, Chris Dinehart wandered around a wrecked office ten minutes later, surveying the damage. The fire, now extinguished, had consumed the entire room: the walls, the carpet, and the ceiling had all burnt black; scorched plaster tiles had fallen out of the ceiling, exposing insulation and pipes, one of which had broken and was dripping water all over the floor beneath it. The shock of the explosion had knocked smaller objects such as wrecked computer equipment and knickknacks, some of which lay in melted puddles. Office chairs had been reduced to ash and foul-smelling burnt plastic, and pieces of broken glass and plaster littered the floor. The only sound in the room, apart from muffled footsteps in the next room, was the soft murmer of the wind, bringing cold air through the shattered windows.

"Dinehart, where'd you go?"

Dinehart whirled around, startled by the sudden voice, as a second soldier named Anthony Threet entered the room, followed by a firefighter.

"There you are," Threet said, his voice muffled slightly by his mask. "You're not supposed to wander off unaccompanied, you know."

"Don't do that Tony!" Dinehart hissed. "No extra promotion for scaring your fellow soldiers out of their minds."

"Sorry." Threet glanced around the room. "Find anything?"

"You're looking at it," Dinehart muttered sardonically. "Plenty of shrapnel."

Threet shrugged. "If I remember right, there's a laboratory over this way."

He crossed the room and entered another doorway (the door had been blasted off its hinges), which led down a hallway. The firefighter ran close behind.

"Let me go in first," he said irritably.

"Sure thing, sergeant," Threet said cheerfully. "What was your name?"

"John Chapman," came his curt reply. "And you're supposed to be following me, not vice versa."

"Yeah, Threet, whatever happened to not wandering off unaccompanied?" Dinehart smirked, and followed Chapman into the hallway. At the other end, another door had been blasted open, and the three of them entered that room and shone their flashlights.

"Seems you were right about the lab," Chapman commented. He waved his flashlight around, scrutinizing the room. "And I think we've found the right location."

They were standing in a large room, also blackened by the flames, which was in even worse shape than the outside rooms; all of the ceiling tiles had fallen out, and some of the exposed electrical wires had frayed; several were emitting a stream of angry white sparks. Tables and chairs had been overturned, everywhere they looked, glass phials and beakers had shattered, and they could see computer equipment and broken microscopes, which had been thrown, across the room. All of these surrounded a sinister-looking sphere, which lay on the floor, covered with sharp spines, and held up by a tripod. The sphere, about a foot in diameter, had split open and was smoking slightly.

"Watch out for the cables," Chapman warned as Dinehart approached the sphere.

"I remember this thing," he said, bending over it. It was filled with blackened metal parts and sizzling wires. "The experts called it the Echidna from Hell. They must have brought it up from storage for analysis. Didn't know it could explode, though."

"Clearly no one did," Threet scratched his head thoughtfully, "or else they wouldn't have left it here."

Dinehart pulled out his radio. "Dinehart to Captain Harkness."

They waited a moment. Then Martha Jones' voice replied, _"Captain Harkness does not have a radio, but he's listening."_

Threet stifled a snigger as Dinehart replied, "I think we found it. We're on Floor 19."

********

Ten minutes later, Threet led Jack, Ianto, and Martha into the room, and pointed at the device.

"Ah, the Devil's Sea Urchin," said Ianto. "Didn't know it was a bomb."

Jack grunted. "It isn't. That's a Delminiran power cell; basically their equivalent of a car battery."

The soldiers and Ianto stared at him.

"How did you know that?" asked Dinehart.

"I've seen them before," Jack said lightly, bending over it. "It's enormously potent. If you hit one of these things with a strong enough force, it could explode."

"What could have set it off?"

"Now that's what's weird," Jack looked around the room with raised eyebrows. "It would probably explode if you threw it in front of a lorry or out the window, but nothing in here could have hit it hard enough."

"What's with the spines?" asked Martha, looking bewildered.

"Anti-theft device," said Jack, shrugging. "Anyway, yeah, this is what exploded, but now what we should be worried about is what exploded it. D'you see any lorries in here?"

Everyone in the room stared at him, and Martha rolled her eyes.

"Okay, bad question. So sue me."

At that moment, Martha's radio crackled again. _"Wood to Captain Harkness."_

Martha rolled her eyes again, and answered, "He's listening."

"I'm up on Floor 26 with Jimmy Stones, and we need Harkness or Ianto Jones up here right away. We've run into a problem."

********

"Oh. My. God," Martha whispered, gaping at the scene before them: there was no ceiling; extending beyond the room she was standing in, it had caved in completely, and though there was no fire, the place had been completely wrecked. Plaster, wires, pipes, even some of the metal beams from the tower's interior structure had fallen out, as though there had been an earthquake, and above them, they could see a gaping hole, extending several floors above them; Martha counted to Floor 28. It was as if the focus of an earthquake had been moved to the center of the tower.

"We were sent to look at Floor 27 and we discovered that the floor was gone," Jimmy Stones said, looking shaken.

"And the ceiling, apparently" Marcus Keele said, stunned. Beside him, Gwen was scrutinizing the upstairs floors with squinted eyes.

"Stones nearly fell in it," said Dave Wood, a stocky black soldier who stood next to Stones. "Something fell through here, from Floor 29."

"I think we've found what set off the explosion downstairs," Ianto told Jack.

The latter rounded on Keele. "Why didn't you mention this before?"

"I told you, we were trying to clear up the fire!" Keele retorted. "I hadn't seen this until now! If there's anybody you should be shouting at, it's the helicopter drivers outside, 'cause they sure didn't say anything about this!"

"What _did_ that?" Martha whispered. "What could spontaneously fall through three floors _and_ set off an explosion _ten floors_ below?"

As one, they all looked either to Keele or to Jack for an explanation. Keele looked as shocked and bewildered as Martha, but Jack was staring off into space, frowning slightly.

"Jack?" asked Martha quietly.

"Can't you hear it?" he asked.

"Hear what?" asked Stones.

Ianto frowned too. "I hear something."

"Hear what?" Stones repeated.

"Jimmy Stones, I take great delight in saying this," said Jack irritably, "Shut up and listen!"

Stones fell silent, and then Martha heard it. A low, periodic hum, so soft that she might not have noticed it had Jack not pointed it out. It sounded every few seconds, almost like a pulse, each hum lasting three or four seconds, ending on an even lower pitch. It was a sound that reminded Martha of the noises that spaceships made in sci-fi shows.

Without a word to anyone, Jack set off across the room toward the sound, kicking aside shrapnel as he went, and everyone followed him, still listening to the pulse. Nobody said a word as they wandered down the adjacent hallway, as the sound grew louder, and then Jack paused.

"I think it's in there," he said, pointing at an open doorway. "Ianto, come with me."

The two men entered the room, and everyone waited outside. Then they heard Ianto Jones' exclamation: "What the_ hell_ is that?"

"Don't touch it," came Jack's voice.

"I wasn't going to."

Martha and the others followed them in, and were met with an astounding sight. In the middle of the room lay a towering polyhedron (the only accurate word anyone could think of), spherical and yet not, with a diameter of at least ten feet, right below the hole in the ceiling. It was composed of what looked like translucent blue panels—Martha was certain that were the object opaque, it would have been black—which were placed in a three-dimensional pattern of hexagons and pentagons… like a giant soccer ball. The pulse it emitted was soft, but its resonation was still heart-stopping.

"Where did this sphere come from?" asked Ianto, looking incredulous. "It wouldn't even fit in the floors up here."

"Well, strictly speaking, that's not a sphere." Jack walked around it as he spoke. "It's a truncated icosahedron."

"A what?" asked Keele, looking nonplussed.

"That's the geometric shape," said Jack. "See the soccer ball pattern?"

"And it wasn't here before?" asked Martha.

Jack, Ianto, and the soldiers all shook their heads. "Never seen it before," said Ianto, "and believe me, I'd notice something like _that_."

Jack hesitated, then stepped forward.

"Don't touch it," cried Keele.

Jack snorted. "Like I said downstairs, I'm a little more indestructible."

He then placed his hand on one of the pentagonal panels, and everyone waited with baited breath. But nothing happened.

"It's all right, I think," said Jack. "Feels like a liquid crystal display, you know, the computer screens they put on Macintosh laptops. See?"

Jack placed his hand on it again, and they noticed that the surface beneath Jack's fingers rippled a little bit.

"Don't think that's what it is though," he added, placing his other hand on the panel. He then moved his hands around the polyhedron, feeling it. The moment he placed his hand on one of the hexagonal panels, however, it fell through, as though Jack had put his hand through some sort of membrane. Jack jumped back in surprise, and the surface of the polyhedron rippled back into shape.

"Definitely not liquid crystal."

The others watched curiously as Jack gingerly raised his hand to the panel again, and pressed against it slightly. Again, his hand sunk through; looking more closely, they could see, however, that it hadn't appeared on the inside of the semi-transparent object.

Jack pulled his hand out again, and felt the hexagonal panel above the first; the same thing happened. He then stepped back, and looked at the others.

"Nothing for it," he said. "Whatever this is, it's way beyond Planet Earth, and I'm going to find out all I can about it."

With that, Jack turned around, and walked through the hexagonal panels, vanishing from sight.

"Jack!" Martha, Gwen, and Ianto shouted simultaneously, horrified at his recklessness, but their fears proved to be pointless. A moment later, Jack's head poked out from the panel; he was grinning maniacally.

"You have _got_ to see this!" he said, looking very excited. "Come on in!"

The others looked at each other. Then Martha hesitated, and followed Jack in. She gasped at her surroundings as Ianto and Gwen appeared beside her, followed by Stones, Wood, and Keele. "You have got to be kidding!"

Gwen gasped too. "It's impossible. This is completely, totally, physically impossible!"

"It's not impossible," laughed Jack, "it's dimensionally transcendental."

"It's bloody bigger on the inside!" Ianto stammered, gaping.

He was quite right. They weren't standing in what should have been the dark insides of the polyhedron, but inside a hexagonal room on a floor with a similar color to the outside, likewise built with hexagonal panels. The walls, made the same liquid crystal-like substance as the outside (only they were opaque rather than translucent), were red gold in color, and lined with metallic black bands. Beyond Earth physics or not, it was incontrovertible. The 'truncated icosahedron' was indeed bigger on the inside.

Still laughing, Jack crossed the room to doorway, which, like everything else inside the place, was hexagonal. "Corridor over here!" he called. "C'mon! Let's find out who built this!"

Martha caught up with him as he strolled down the corridor, this time lined with bright white walls which shone with light. It stretched for what looked like one to two hundred feet before them, flanked with similar hexagonal doorways.

"Whoever built this certainly liked hexagons," Jack commented as they walked.

"D'you think it's Time Lord?" asked Martha in a low voice. "It's bigger on the inside… are we in some sort of Tardis?"

Jack shrugged. "Maybe… the Tardis is the only thing I've seen which was bigger on the inside, but if the Time Lords figured out how to do it, maybe someone else did too."

He paused at a doorway, and then poked is head through. He then stepped back.

"Just a storage room by the looks of things," he said. "Completely empty though, that's odd. It's the control room I want to see."

As Jack stood there, looking contemplative, Wood spoke up from the back.

"I'm in an alien spaceship," he said, an odd look on his face. "Spaceship… Alien. Spaceship. Bigger on the inside."

Jack grinned at him. "Welcome to the Universe, Dave Wood."

"Do you think this thing crash-landed?" asked Martha. "Only, how could it have crash-landed into Canary Wharf without leaving a hole on the outside?"

Jack couldn't answer. Instead he nodded down the corridor. "Let's go. Maybe the control room is down this way. Judging by the shape of that room, and perhaps the shape of the outside, I think that the inside is spherical or something similar, and if it's a sphere, I'll hazard a guess at the control room being at the center of the ship."

They pressed further, another twenty or thirty feet, until they passed another doorway, but this time leading to another hall; like the storage room Jack had just described, it eventually curved out of sight, indeed indicating that the inside was spherical. Jack only spared it a passing glance, but Martha's scream alerted him, and he whirled around and leapt backward with a yelp.

They were looking right into the eye of a Dalek.

********

**Good cliffhanger, right? Again, sorry for taking so long to update it, but I finally sat down today and kept working on it until I finished. So this is my Christmas gift to you. Since I'm on break for another week, I can put more time into this. Maybe I'll even finish it.**

**Merry Christmas!**

**-- Ancalagar**


	6. Chapter 5: Defense Protocols

Chapter 5:

Defense Protocols

Nobody moved. Neither did the Dalek. If he had acted on his first impulse, Jack would have had them all running in the opposite direction as fast as they could, but something held him back, and he realized that it was the Dalek's behavior, or lack thereof.

The Dalek did not react when they appeared. Its eyestalk was pointed directly at them, but it didn't seem to have noticed them. Then Jack noticed that its eye was not shining. The sides of the Dalek's gold armor was blackened in places, and even stranger was the fine white dust that covered its base and neckpiece, and also the floor surrounding it.

Jack hesitated, but still the Dalek did not move. Then he whispered, "If it even twitches, run. Don't stop, just get out of here."

He carefully treaded right up to the Dalek, raised a fist, and tapped its dome three times. Nothing happened. Jack raised his hand and brushed some of the dust off the Dalek's head, and then sniffed it. His brow furrowed, then he moved around the Dalek, watching it carefully. As soon as he was behind the Dalek, he relaxed.

"It's all right," he said to the others. "It's stone dead. Somebody did a thorough job."

Reaching forward, Jack took hold of the Dalek, and turned it around, revealing a gaping hole burnt in its back. Its inside was coated with the white dust.

Martha stepped forward, and also touched the dust. "Is that…?"

"Dalek dust," Jack brushed more of the dust off. "Incinerator beam, if I were to hazard a guess. Hot enough to reduce the Dalek inside to ash, but not the armor."

He paused, then joined them again. "Let's move on, but keep your eyes open. I don't want to be surprised by a live one."

As they walked, Ianto spoke up. "I've seen those things. They were at Canary Wharf."

"Yep," said Jack in a matter-of-fact tone. "I'd love to know what one was doing on this ship though. It's not a Dalek ship… at least, I've never seen a Dalek ship designed like this one, and as far as I know, they never figured out how to make things bigger on the inside."

Jack then paused, and added. "Somebody with a gun should walk ahead of us. Stones, you do it."

"Why me?" asked Stones, glancing back at the dead Dalek.

"One, you're carrying a gun," said Jack, becoming tetchy. "Two, because I told you to, and three, because I don't like you."

Martha, Ianto, and Gwen all gaped at him in astonishment, as Stones slouched to the front.

"What is your problem?" he snapped as he went.

"Don't talk like that to your commanding officer," Jack snapped back.

"You are not my commanding officer," Stones pointed out. "I can say what I like. What have I ever done to you?"

"Nothing," Jack growled, "but it is ironic that of all places for me to run into you, it had to be at Canary Wharf, where the one person we both once knew fought and died, someone who was as good as a sister to me. But you were hardly a friend to her."

There was a very tense silence, as Jack looked daggers at Stones, who seemingly realized who Jack was talking about, and looked very shocked, but a moment later his face turned scarlet with anger.

"That's none of your business," he hissed. "She was a bl---"

"If you finish that sentence, I'll drag you to Cardiff and feed you to my friend Janet," Jack snarled. "Now do what you're told. Go ahead of us!"

Stones scowled, but didn't reply. He obediently pulled out his gun and led the way down the hall. Jack followed, also seething, leaving a very uncomfortable silence in his wake. Gwen and Ianto looked even more confused, but Martha looked comprehending as she realized the implication behind the angry words, and she glanced away from the two men, looking awkward.

The group was completely silent as they walked down the hall after that. They didn't see any more Daleks, dead or alive, as they went, and a few minutes later they reached the end of the corridor, its hexagonal door also sealed with the same strange membrane-like substance. Stones paused and allowed Jack to march through first, then followed, and the others entered the room behind them.

All of them stood rooted to the spot, stunned at the magnificence of what appeared to be the control room, which was more like a hallway than a room. It was clearly circular, surrounding what Jack supposed was the core of the ship, and the walls were filled with control panels.

Apart from the seven intruders, the place was devoid of any people or Daleks, and the room was completely silent apart from the ship's pulse, which reverberated around the room, giving it an eerie low echo.

"Right," said Jack, "we'll have a look around. Martha, you're with me. Gwen, you go with Keele and Wood, and go that way…" He pointed to this right, "…and Ianto, you're with Stones." He pointed to his left. "Go that way. Everyone radio me if you find anything interesting. If you see anything operating the controls… well, if it's an alien, don't raise a gun at it. We don't want to appear provocative. Just try to communicate with it, and if its hostile, run and let me know on the radio. If it's a Dalek, really run for it. That's the best advice I can give. Now get going."

The others nodded and went down their respective routes. Jack remained with Martha, and he bent over the controls.

"So is it Time Lord?" asked Martha.

"Not sure," said Jack. "These look nothing like the Tardis console… and this place is enormous."

"The Tardis was enormous," Martha pointed out.

"But the console wasn't this big." Jack ran his fingers across the panel, careful not to touch any of the controls. "It seems this place needs a lot of people and a lot of power to work, whatever it does. I'm not sure if it's a spaceship or a time ship or what it is, but all the same…"

"And you said it certainly isn't a Dalek ship?"

Jack shook his head. "Do these controls look like they're designed for Dalek use?"

Martha surveyed the control panel nearest her, which contained a lever, a few switches, some dials, and a few oddly-shaped icons… certainly controls beyond Martha's knowledge, but she knew enough to know that whatever operated the ship needed fingers, certainly incompatible with Dalek sucker arms. Smiling slightly, Martha shook her head.

"It's not the same design," Jack continued. "The architecture's wrong, the outer design is wrong, the ship's ambience is very wrong, and the dimensional transcendentalism is definitely wrong. This is no Dalek ship."

"Well, Time Lord is the only other thing I can think of," said Martha. "I dunno, maybe this ship was left over from the Time War, and that's why there was a Dalek inside it."

At that moment, Gwen's voice sounded on Martha's radio_. "We've found another two dead Daleks down this way. Thought I'd let you know."_

Martha answered urgently, "Are you sure they're dead?"

"_Are you kidding? They're in even worse condition than the first one. One's been blown in half, and they're also covered in that white stuff."_

Martha breathed a sigh of relief. "Thanks, Gwen. Carry on."

A moment later, Ianto's voice came through. _"We've already seen several of them. All dead, but I think they're all over the place."_

"Blimey," Martha said to Jack. "You're right, someone definitely did a thorough job with these Daleks."

********

_There was an intruder. Rose opened her eyes in surprise. Perhaps she had been more successful than she thought. Somebody had gotten in. Somebody had heard her call. Standing shakily, she wandered back to the desk, and placed her hand on the control panel again, and shut her eyes, trying to discern what she could from the real world. _

_Hexagons…. They were everywhere, a significant symbol to the Helials, always part of their architecture. Transcendentally Existential Vessels were a masterpiece of Helian technology, and the full secrets of its operation remained known only to its creators. Even when connected to Eve of the Eternal, Rose only understood a few of those secrets, but she knew enough to perceive that it was far more sophisticated than the crude imitation that the Daleks had put together. _

_The truncated icosahedron was their most common design because the majority of the polyhedron's sides were hexagons, and when two hexagonal panels lined up vertically from a center of gravity on the vessel, it opened up a doorway. The existence of such a function attested to the inventors' ingenuity, and therefore it was very surprising to Rose that somebody had found the way in. _

_Her eyes still shut, Rose concentrated on the physical reality she had been cut off from, determined to see what Eve of the Eternal saw. Then an image of a shorter woman with dark hair and dark eyebrows came into Rose's view, a woman who looked remarkably familiar to her. The woman was accompanied by a thickset, dark-skinned man in military uniform, and also a tall, thinner man wearing what memory told her was the outfit of a firefighter. _

_Moving on, Rose then focused on another part of the vessel, where the computer's data told her that another group of these intruders. Another woman came into view, a black woman with a badge that displayed a red cross… a doctor. Then this doctor's friend also came into view, and Rose's eyes shot open in surprise._

"_What is he doing here?" she whispered, amazed._

_She shut them again, and looked harder. Then she opened them again, feeling an emotion she had not felt for a very long time… and that emotion was hope, because he was somebody she recognized, somebody she trusted… somebody she thought was long dead. _

********

The dead Daleks were everywhere. Ianto stared all around him as he wandered down the enormous corridor, or control room, or whatever it was, growing more amazed the more he looked. Hundreds of Cybermen and Torchwood soldiers couldn't even bring down four. He remembered that day at Canary Wharf as clearly as if it were yesterday. He was one of the few survivors, and he had watched as the defenders of Torchwood Tower fell, one by one, and the Daleks weren't even scratched by their weapons.

So what could so easily have butchered what appeared to be perhaps hundreds of Daleks? And where were the people who defeated them? Who controlled this ship? Everywhere Ianto looked, he only saw the wrecked Dalek shells.

Beside him, Jimmy Stones was staring all around the room; his face had lost all of its anger from his earlier argument with Jack, and now held only awe. Ianto didn't blame him. In all his time working with Torchwood One, and then with Torchwood Three, Ianto Jones had seen a lot of strange things, beyond the imagination of the average inhabitant of Earth. He had seen people brought back to life, even if only for a few minutes. He had seen many aliens, some wandering around sewers, some appearing from the Cardiff Rift. He had seen Cybermen and he had seen their ways, and also the Daleks and _their_ ways.

But this far surpassed anything Ianto had ever seen before. For the first time, Ianto truly realized the folly of Yvonne Hartman and Torchwood One, as he looked around the realm of some civilization which clearly was far greater and far superior to Earth. It made him feel very small and insignificant, and that terrified him.

"What are these things anyway?" asked Stones, interrupting Ianto's thoughts. He was scrutinizing a Dalek that stood just feet away from them.

"Not sure really," Ianto said. "Some sort of alien death machine, although judging from what Jack's said, they're some sort of cybernetic creature. I've seen them before; they were at the Battle of Canary Wharf, and I used to work at Torchwood Tower. I was very lucky to survive. What about you? Were you there?"

Stones shook his head, an irritated look crossing his face. "I was just about to join UNIT then. I'd hidden under my bed while Cybermen patrolled the estate."

Ianto shrugged. "Better than where I was. Believe me, that would have been far better than were I was."

He trailed off, thinking about the events that day, and the events that followed.

Stones interrupted his thoughts again. "Jones!" he hissed, his expression suddenly wary.

"What?" asked Ianto, his voice also low.

Stones pointed down the hallway. "I think I saw something moving down there."

He pulled his gun out again, but Ianto put his hand on his arm. "Jack said no guns. We don't want to appear provocative."

Stones didn't look impressed. "What if it's one of those Dalek things?"

"We run," said Ianto simply. "I told you, I was there at Canary Wharf. Hundreds of Cybermen and the troops at Torchwood didn't even scratch four Daleks. You won't even dent it."

Stones scowled, and put his gun away. They then cautiously approached the area Stones had indicated, looking around for any sign of movement.

They passed a group of three Dalek remnants, and looked up and down the corridor. Then Stones froze, and Ianto glanced at him, before following his gaze, and his mouth fell open in amazement.

There was a person by the control panel, a woman dressed in all in black, bent over the controls with a hand resting on one of the icons. She stood a little more than five feet high, and she had shoulder-length blonde hair which hid her face, but what little skin Ianto could see was very pale, almost chalk-white, which made her hair look almost brown in color.

She either didn't notice them or she completely ignored them, but an involuntary twitch that Stones made caused the woman to pause, and slowly look up. Ianto had to stifle a surprised gasp when he saw her face: she had a cybernetic implant attached to her left temple, which extended over her eyebrow and down over her ear, and down around her neck like a collar; wires and tubes extended from the implant, some attached to her scalp, others connected to similar implants. Ianto could see one that ran down underneath her collar and onto her chest. Another group of wires ran down the woman's left arm, to a mechanical hand, which rested on another icon on the control panel.

But what really alarmed Ianto was the cold, steely look in the woman's eyes, and the lack of expression or emotion on her face. It was a look that reminded Ianto of Lisa after the Cybermen had destroyed her.

Ianto stared at the woman for several minutes, unsure of what to say or how to act. He then glanced at Stones, and was even more surprised by his reaction to the woman's appearance; Stones' face had turned very white, and his eyes were wide with surprise, glued to the woman. He looked as though he was looking at a ghost.

Then the woman, or cyborg, or whatever she was, spoke in a monotonous voice that sounded metallic and half-mechanical, as she clearly was. "Identification: James Stones, Human male. Status: Enemy. Activate defense protocols."

********

_A new and yet old emotion erupted within Rose, an emotion she had not truly felt since before she fell into this state… and that emotion was rage. Rage at the sight of him, rage at the sudden reappearance of that two-timing liar into her life. Earlier, she had felt hope at the sight of someone she trusted. Now, she suddenly felt fury at the sight of someone she had hoped in her distant past that she'd never see again. _

_Memories of the hurt he had given her rose up, and Rose could feel herself shaking with suppressed wrath. She felt an uncontrollable desire to retaliate, to get back at him for what he did to her in her early years. _

_Prior to her reawakening, Rose hadn't really had any need to control her emotions, because there had been nothing to cause a rise in emotions. Therefore she was unable to completely control her thoughts. She was so angry that she imagined him at that station in the Weakest Link, such a long time ago, being the one disintegrated by the Anne Droid. _

_Then she heard that second presence speaking again, and she calmed down enough to listen to what it said. And before the sane, forgiving side of her could get the better of her, before she could say or do anything, she felt Eve of the Eternal give the vessel its most lethal command._

"_NO!" she screamed, even though no one would hear her, but it was too late. There was a suddenly flash of light in the physical realm, and then she saw a cloud of white dust erupt from where the unfortunate Jimmy Stones stood moments before, the same fate that the doomed Dalek invaders had met._

********

Suddenly, there was a low rumble, like thunder, echoing throughout the halls and rooms of the ship, and before anyone could react, the floor shook. Jack was suddenly thrown forward against the controls, then backwards, sprawled on the floor, while Martha was flung painfully across the vibrating floor

"What the _hell_ was that?" Martha shouted, standing up shakily; her feet were starting to feel numb from the vibrations. As she spoke the resonance of the ship changed to a faster pulse with a higher pitch.

Jack got up and ran to the controls. "Sounds like something's activated this ships protocols."

"That's not good, is it?" Martha said, joining him by the controls.

"It had better not mean that we'll be flung out into space," Jack groaned. "Because the science in this ship is way beyond me."

At that moment, Ianto ran from the area he had been sent to explore, looking shell-shocked. His clothes were covered with white dust, and he was panting as though he had run for a mile.

"What happened to you?" asked Jack, staring.

"Shaking… I know what set it off," Ianto gasped, wiping sweat and dust from his forehead. He seemed to be having trouble standing. "There's something living here… at least, I think it's alive."

Martha frowned. "Where's Stones? He was with you, wasn't he?"

Ianto shook his head. "He's dead. It incinerated him, like the Daleks."

"Oh my God," Martha groaned.

"What was it?" Jack demanded, his expression alert. "Did you see it?"

"It was… I don't know!" Ianto cried, uncharacteristically panicked. At that moment, Gwen, Keele, and Wood ran down from the other side of the room. The ship's pulse grew slightly louder, but the vibrations slowed. Jack glanced at the controls, before turning to the others.

"Right," he said. "We've stayed too long. I don't know what's happening, but we're getting out of here now."

********

_The wolf and scorpion were back. The wolf was still in the cage, whimpering from the pain of its tormentor's sting, but something seemed rouse it again. It made a second attempt to get out, clawing at the bars of the cage and at the scorpion. But the scorpion seemed just as determined to keep the wolf in the cage, and it struck a second time. _

_Rose flinched at the wolf's howls. She tried to block her ears, but this did nothing to muffle the sound of the animal's agony… just as nothing calmed her terror, nothing dampened the horror at what she inadvertently had done just now, and nothing dulled her pain. Every scream the wolf emitted echoed in Rose's soul, because she knew its pain, and she knew its despair. _

_She already knew that Jack and his friends were abandoning the ship, and they were wise to do so. She had failed. Unless someone more capable of freeing her appeared, she would once again sink into oblivion, and this time she would stand no chance of escape. The scorpion was winning; the wolf couldn't get out without help._

********

Captain Magambo and Colonel Mace were waiting for Jack and his party outside of the ship, and as they exited, Jack glanced back at the ship to see what looked like a faint accretion disc of electrical blue light flowing into the sides of the ship seemingly from everywhere; occasionally bolts of static electricity flashed, shocking people in the vicinity, but he could see and feel that the bolts were not of high enough voltage to harm anyone. He could see a faint glow growing inside the translucent polyhedron.

"What's going on?" he demanded as he looked at the officers.

Unfazed, Colonel Mace said to him, "As someone who clearly has been inside that thing, I hoped you would tell me."

Jack glared at him, but Captain Magambo stepped in.

"Three and a half minutes ago that thing started absorbing electricity," she said. "Anything electrical, cars, mobile phones, cables, they're all losing power. It's already drained the whole of Canary Wharf."

"Is it starting to drain London as well?" asked Martha, astonished.

Magambo nodded. "You can see it from here. Anything electrical is out."

"So we're cut off from any communication," added Colonel Mace. "Captain Harkness, what's happening in there?"

"I don't know," Jack admitted. "The technology in there is far beyond my abilities, but you might want to ask Ianto. He saw it happen."

"What sort of technology was it?" Mace pressed urgently.

Jack hesitated. "We think it might be Time Lord."

As he spoke, there was a roar and the floor started shaking. Pieces of shrapnel fell from the hole in the ceiling, and everyone looked up in time to see a small whirlpool of white light form in said hole, fueled by the electrical energy.

"What is that?" asked Martha, squinting.

"I don't like the look of it," said Jack. "I've seen phenomena like that before, and if I'm right, it's either opening up a rift in time and space, or a black hole."

Speechless, everyone turned to stare at Jack in horror as he calmly opened up his Vortex Manipulator, only to see that it had lost power too.

"Can't scan it," he groaned. "Can't interfere with it. And now I can't contact anyone who would be able to help either."

"How do we stop it?" asked Martha.

"I don't think we can." Jack's voice was dull as he shut his Vortex Manipulator. "Not even the Daleks stood a chance against whoever built this; we're probably not going to."

As he spoke, Martha felt a vibration in her pocket, and froze. Turning to Magambo, she said, "I thought you said that mobile phones weren't working."

Magambo nodded in confusion. "They're not."

Bewildered, Martha pulled her phone from her pocket. The caller ID told her that Tom was calling from South Africa. "Then why is mine ringing?"

There was a quiet pause, except for the rushing of the power into the light above them.

"Martha, is that the phone the Doctor upgraded?" Jack asked quietly.

Martha nodded.

"It must be his upgrade; that's why the phone's working," he said, more to himself than to Martha. Then he looked at the other and said in amusement, "I think he's just given you the only means by which we can contact anyone, and I think I know just the man."

Martha's eyes widened, and she started dialing a number. "Thank you, Doctor!"

********

**I love being on Christmas break, don't you? I'll get to work on the next chapter immediately; I've been looking forward to this one, because now the Doctor's coming to the rescue. **

**Fanfiction writers can't be paid in money, so they get paid in reviews. Please drop a comment or two! **


	7. Chapter 6: Void

Chapter 6

Void

It was silent as Donna stirred under her blankets, and yawning widely, she sat up and rubbed her eyes. The only noise was the Tardis's usual pulsating hum, lacking the usual noise that came from the console room when she woke up.

Donna slid out of bed and looked at the alarm clock she had set up on her bedside table (her room had a clock on the wall, but it had five hands and showed the Gallifreyan script instead of English): by Donna's timeline, it was about five o' clock in the morning, or whatever the Tardis had besides morning.

The first new noise Donna heard was the Doctor's footsteps down the hall, and deciding that it was time for her to get up too, Donna crossed the room to the dresser and started sorting through her clothes.

It was odd, she thought as she pulled a blue shirt on, that every day on the Tardis started like any normal day on Earth: get up, get dressed, and have your breakfast. After that, however, the day grew progressively more and more bizarre, from the moment the Doctor would bound from the kitchen to the control room, and then spend half an hour deciding where to go before setting the coordinates.

Today, however, felt different.

As she finished getting dressed, she thought she heard voices in the control room, and she curiously opened her door and quietly walked outside and down the corridor. When she reached the control room, however, she only saw the Doctor standing by the console, looking nonplussed, but Donna could have sworn she heard a second voice say just before she entered, "Prepare yourself, Doctor. It begins now."

The Doctor hadn't noticed her, but before Donna could make herself known, she heard a phone ring. The Doctor turned around and picked up Martha's mobile phone.

"That you, Martha?"

There was a pause, then the Doctor asked, "Why? What's the matter?"

The next pause as Martha spoke was very long. The odd feeling Donna had about the day ahead grew stronger—Martha never called unless something was happening and she needed help—but Donna also felt thrilled at the opportunity to visit Martha.

After a few minutes of complete silence, Donna saw the Doctor nod, then suddenly roll his eyes.

"What the hell has Harkness done now?" he demanded, surprising Donna. Evidently Martha had been taken by surprise too, because Donna could hear her loud retort over from across the room. Then the Doctor sighed, and said, "All right, I'll follow your signal. Be there in a mo."

He snapped the phone shut, and Donna cleared her throat. The Doctor jumped, and looked up to see her.

"Wow, you're on edge this morning," Donna felt pleased with herself; anyone who got the Doctor to jump out of his skin deserved a metal.

The Doctor recollected himself, looking slightly embarrassed. "Sorry, Donna. I'm not usually that jumpy."

"Bad night?"

He shrugged. "Bad night, and very unusual morning. Not a good combination when you're my age."

Donna shook her head, still amused. "So what's Martha up to?"

"Something happening on Earth, apparently." The Doctor ran his fingers through his hair. "_Again._ She's phoned for help."

"Good... I mean, _not_ good," Donna added hastily, "but it'll be good to see Martha."

The Doctor placed the phone on the console, then stretched a device wired to the screen forward and attached it to the phone. Donna took a seat in the seat by the console, and looked up at the Doctor. "Who's 'Harkness?'" she asked curiously.

The Time Lord made a noise that sounded simultaneously like another grunt and a groan. "Jack Harkness… friend of mine. He used to travel with me, way back when."

He fiddled with some controls, and then pulled a switch. The "Ah ha! Locked onto Martha's location." The Doctor looked sideways at Donna as the rotor started moving up and down, and the engines started whining. "I should warn you, Jack's a bit… well, let's just say he considers the day wasted if he hasn't hit on six or seven people before lunchtime."

"Oh, just leave him to me," said Donna cheerfully. "I'll set him right."

The Doctor groaned. "That's exactly what I'm afraid of."

"Oi!"

********

_The whimpering had returned, and she glanced up to see the wolf and the scorpion, rematerializing before her, for perhaps the fourth or fifth time, over and over again, and each time the wolf's cries grew weaker. Each time the scorpion stung it, the wolf shrunk further into its cage, giving into its agony, and each time Rose witnessed its surrender, the more frightened she became. She couldn't understand why she kept seeing these two creatures, but it was quite clear what the vision signified. _

_This time, the wolf had not risen to escape again. This time it simply lay in its cage, and the scorpion's sting still arched above its back, poised to strike again should the wolf make any more attempts to escape; those attempts had greatly weakened it, so that it looked even less healthy than before. The wolf had given up, had lost all hope, just as Rose had lost all hope. The scorpion was victorious; Eve of the Eternal had won._

********

No sooner had Martha hung up when the familiar whine of the Tardis engines reached her ears, and she looked to her right just in time to see the familiar blue police box come into view in a corner opposite the polyhedron, which was glowing still brighter. The gyrating light above them had also grown brighter, and they could feel a gentle rush of air spiraling around them, carrying dust with it, like a dust devil.

The Tardis doors opened and the Doctor sprinted out, pulling on his brown trench coat; Donna followed close behind. As Martha and Jack ran up to greet them, the Doctor looked from the strange vessel and the accretion of electrical energy to the flaring light above them. His eyes widened, and his mouth opened and closed a few times, but no sound came out. For once, the Doctor looked completely speechless.

"I think you've got the gist of what's going on," said Jack, smiling humorlessly.

The Doctor glared at him. "What is going on here?"

"Not sure." Jack turned to look at the ship too. "It just showed up here and blew half the place up."

"And where is here?"

Jack and Martha looked at each other uneasily. Then the former turned back to the Doctor. "Welcome back to Torchwood Tower."

The Doctor blanched, and a shadow passed over his face. He then shook his head, and turned back to the vessel, pulling his sonic screwdriver from a pocket. "It's draining everything electrical and harnessing that power."

He pointed the screwdriver at the light and began scanning it.

"Your sonic screwdriver's still working," said Jack, scowling. "It and Martha's phone. Everything else: zip. Even my Vortex Manipulator's down."

"I told you that thing was a piece of junk." The Doctor lowered the screwdriver. "It's using the power to unravel the threads of space and time," he said, squinting at it.

Jack groaned. "So it is forming a black hole."

"A black hole?" gasped Donna. "But don't they, like, suck everybody in or something?"

The Doctor shrugged. "Yeah, or some sort of breach. And Donna, once the hole is big enough, yes, it will pull everything and everyone in, planet included." He turned back to Jack and Martha. "And that thing just appeared here? At Torchwood Tower, no less."

Martha nodded. "It blew half the place up."

The Doctor's eyes shut as fury and horror crossed his face again. He swayed a little, as though he was about to pass out, and Jack, Martha, and Donna all simultaneously moved to catch him, but he didn't fall. Instead he rubbed his eyes with his thumb and forefinger, and recovering, he bounded up to the ship. "Right!" he said loudly. "Jack, how close a look did you get at this thing?"

"We got inside it," said Jack smugly.

The Doctor paused, and turned to stare at him. "You got inside it?" he repeated incredulously. "How did you get inside it? This technology is way beyond even you, Jack. _I'd_ have a hard time getting inside it."

"D'you know what it is?" asked Martha.

"Oh yeah." The Doctor scratched the back of his neck. "I know what it is. So how did you get in?"

Jack shrugged. "Complete accident. Doc, have you met Ianto?"

He nodded at his fellow team member, who had been standing to the side throughout the exchange; Magambo and Gwen had escorted Wood and Keele away from the scene while Martha was on the phone, and Jack had persuaded Colonel Mace to go with them.

Ianto stepped forward, his hand outstretched. "Ianto Jones," he said, shaking the Doctor's hand. "Are you _the_ Doctor in Torchwood's history?"

The Doctor grinned. "Yep, that's me, werewolf, Queen Victoria, and all."

"So, you want to see the inside?" asked Jack. "Getting in is easy enough. C'mon, Ianto."

The two men then walked past the Doctor and stepped through the hexagonal sides. The Doctor raised his eyebrows in surprise as Martha followed them through; the former, however, stayed outside and placed his hand on one of the pentagonal sides.

"Oh, you are beautiful!" he exclaimed, stroking the panel.

"What is it?" asked Donna.

Instead of answering, the Doctor stepped in front of the hexagon and placed his hand through it, before walking through himself. Donna followed, and gasped as she took in the front room.

"It's like the Tardis!"

Jack laughed. "Partly why we needed you, Doc."

"You would not believe how much this is a relief to me," the Doctor sighed, as he looked around. "This ship is bigger on the inside, and that means that it can't be the same as last time."

"What d'you mean, the same as last time?" asked Donna.

The Doctor looked at her. "I've seen one of these before, but this is much more sophisticated."

He turned back to Jack and Martha. "We're in another Void Ship."

********

_It was __him._

_Rose had very nearly given in to her despair when Jack had left the Void Ship, but he had hardly been gone a minute before he returned, and he brought the one person Rose believed could free her. _

_She had felt Eve of the Eternal become alert as it detected five humanoids enter the ship, three of which had been there before; but there was an incongruity in their biological signatures. Rose's interest had perked up at this, and then she saw a tall, thin man with brown hair and side burns, and dark eyes that were so familiar to her, the same eyes that even now had never failed to fill her with comfort and trust. _

_He was now speaking to Jack as he walked. As Rose's curiosity rose, Eve of the Eternal began to listen to their conversation. It was at that moment that the Doctor saw the remains of one of the Dalek invaders, and paused to look at it._

"_Blimey," he said quietly. "You weren't kidding, were you, Jack?"_

"_That's what confuses me." Jack peered inside the Dalek's shell again. "I've already been in the control room, and its not designed for Dalek use, nor is the architecture right."_

_The Doctor nodded. "You are right, although that should have been clear from the moment you got in this ship. The Daleks lacked the imagination necessary to make things bigger on the inside. They even referred to it as 'Time Lord' science. Anyway, this one is a completely different design. For starters, theirs was a sphere, but this one is a truncated icosahedron."_

"_Sorry, what are Daleks?" the redhead asked. Rose looked at her and was shocked to recognize the same woman she had seen while trying to get a message through to her universe, the one who had hidden her mother's keys in a dust bin. _

"_What was your name?" asked Jack, suddenly turning his attention to Donna. _

"_Donna Noble," the redhead answered, shaking Jack's hand. _

"_Nice to meet you, Donna Noble," Jack said promptly. _

_Rose smiled slightly as the Doctor and the dark woman exclaimed in unison, "Not now, Jack!"_

_Donna raised an eyebrow. "You're Jack, I already know that. So, Daleks?"_

"_Think of the Nazis," Jack told her. "Nasty guys, I never want to meet them again…. Think of them, and now think of their numbers, their technology, their master race ideology, their evil, and their acts of genocide multiplied by a billion… and you get the Daleks."_

_Donna looked sick, but before she could say anything, the Doctor drew Jack's attention back to the problem at hand, then both turned to the other man who had been with Jack the first time. Rose tuned out; however much she loved to hear the Doctor's voice, she had more important things to do, because Eve of the Eternal was in defense mode; anyone who was formerly acquainted with her was in deadly danger here, and only Rose could protect them._

********

"What was he doing here?" the Doctor asked, looking outraged.

"Exactly what I'd asked Martha," Jack told him.

"It doesn't matter why he was here," Ianto answered, looking exasperated. "He's dead. You won't have to put up with him."

This surprised the Doctor. "He's dead?" he asked, curious. "What happened?"

"I don't know… we were in the control room, or what I think was the control room."

"It's enormous," Jack interrupted. "And it's more of a donut shape; you'll see."

"It being a donut shape is why Jack didn't see what happened," Ianto continued. "Stones and I were down around the other side of the donut, I guess. Anyway, we saw some somebody there, some sort of cyborg. She took one look at Stones and said something about defense protocols. Then she incinerated him."

"There's your answer, Jack," the Doctor said. "The defense protocols activated, and this vessel is designed to exist outside of time and space. As part of the protocols it began opening a breach in space-time with whatever power it could get. But why would Jimmy Stones activate the defense protocols?"

Ianto shrugged. "She said she considered him an enemy."

The Doctor frowned, and looked at the dead Dalek with a cocked eyebrow, looking perplexed. "That's odd. What connection would somebody like Stones have with a Void Ship? Was he ever at Canary Wharf?"

Martha shook her head. "Not that I know of, but at some point, he was recruited by UNIT, and they've been in control of Canary Wharf ever since the battle."

The Doctor shook his head. "The first Void Ship was gone by then. Let's think… Void Ship, Void ship… void, void, void… oh."

The Doctor's face lit up for a split second, and but his conclusive expression faded the moment it appeared.

"No," he whispered incredulously. "It can't be… it's completely impossible."

********

**Happy New Year!... even though New Years was a couple of days ago. It is now the year 2010, I am about to start college again, and it won't be as rough a semester as last semester was, so I'll actually be able to do this more often. **

**The next chapter is one that shouldn't be too hard to write up, because I've had the dialogue in mind for ages. It will explain exactly what happened when Rose fell into the Void, and what happened to her afterwards. All I'm going to tell you now is that she's been through a rough time, and she's got a rough time ahead, although you probably already worked that out ****. **

**Next week (I hope): Chapter 7: Caged Wolf**


	8. Chapter 7: Caged Wolf

Chapter 7

Caged Wolf

"_Here is no water but only rock, Rock and no water and the sandy road."_

_Rose paused, and glanced up at the sound, but there was no one about. No Cyberman hallucinations, no wolf and scorpion, only the bookshelves and the domed ceiling. Rose stood and glanced around the room more closely, but again, there was no one. She was as alone as she ever was, but she could have sworn that she heard a voice speaking those words. _

_She didn't recognize the voice that had spoken, nor did she recognize the strange words, but they chilled her, because they held such relevance to her own situation. Just as there was no water but only rock, in this state she had no life, only existence._

_But the fact was, she __had__ heard something speak, and that was what confused her. There had always been the second presence, but until her attempt at an escape, she had never had these hallucinations. _

********

"So is it Time Lord?" asked Martha.

They were now in the control room. The Doctor had bounded to the controls the moment they entered, and ran his hands and his sonic screwdriver over them, making awe-struck exclamations as he did, and causing his companions to smile at each other in amusement; even in a crisis, the Doctor couldn't resist examining technology. However, they also recognized that they only had hours before the black hole opened completely, so Martha brought the Doctor's attention back to the problem at hand by asking the question.

The Doctor shook his head. "Wrong architecture, wrong technology, definitely the wrong science. To the Time Lords, Void travel was just a theory."

"But it's bigger on the inside!" Donna pointed out. "That's definitely Time Lord, you said so!"

"I said that the Time Lords were the _first_ to make things bigger on the inside." The Doctor smirked. "I never said they were the _only_ ones."

He paused, and stood up, squinting at the controls. "Let's think now. It's a Void ship, and there are only a few hundred civilizations across time that had the necessary technology to my knowledge. Void travel, that would be related to travel between parallel universes, so whoever invented this was more than capable of crossing realities."

"It has a defense system that is more than capable of fighting Daleks," Jack added.

The Doctor nodded. "Good point. What else? Liquid energy portals, the formation of which is based on the angle between the vessel and a gravitational center… Basic architecture; clearly the hexagon was an important shape to this civilization."

Then he paused, and an odd look crossed his face, one of sudden comprehension, shock, and then his expression finally settled on disquiet. The Doctor stepped back from the controls, and scratched the back of his neck, scowling.

"What's the matter?" asked Martha.

"There's only one civilization that matches this technology." The Doctor looked at Jack again. "It was built by the Taledrevans."

Jack shook his head. "The who?"

The Doctor looked surprised. "You'd heard of the Time Lords in the 51st century, and you definitely knew about the Daleks, but you haven't heard of the Taledrevans?"

Jack shrugged.

"Blimey…" The Doctor scratched his neck again. "Well, put it this way: if the Daleks are like the Nazi Empire times a million, then the Taledrevans are the British Empire times a million. Taledrev was the name of their star, which is located in the elliptical galaxy MCG 13-7-2. They operated under an imperialist impulse similar to the 'divide and conquer' diplomacy; it led them to conquer trillions of worlds and hundreds of galaxies. They were almost as greatly feared as the Daleks, and they rivaled the Time Lords in power... and they were almost as ancient." He paused, looking pensive. "Some people called them the Taledrevans, but I think most commonly they're known as the Helials."

As he said these words, the ship's pulse seemed to slow for a second, almost as though the very mention of its creators alerted it.

"On the other hand, maybe you haven't heard of them because they never tried to take over this sector of the Universe," the Doctor added to Jack. "The Time Lords' presence here discouraged them. They were imperialist, but they knew where they could not win; so the Time Lords and the Helials generally avoided each other."

"How come you're speaking of them in past tense?" asked Martha. "What happened to them?"

"They vanished," he answered simply. "Way back at the start of the Time War, knowing that the Helials hated the Daleks as much as anyone, the Time Lords tried to ask them for help. But by the time the messengers got to Taledrev, they'd gone. Nobody was sure what happened to them, but now," The Doctor looked around, "I think I know where they went."

********

The group had split up again, once Ianto pointed the Doctor in the direction that he had seen the cyborg. The Doctor and Donna set off in that direction, guided by Ianto, and the former had sent Jack and Martha in the opposite direction. "It could have gone anywhere by now," the Doctor had pointed out.

As they walked past even more control panels, Donna saw the Doctor twitch. She rolled her eyes. "Oi!" she said to him. "Stop fidgeting, Spaceman! You'll have plenty of time to look around once we've shut this thing off!"

The Doctor looked slightly embarrassed. "I can't help it!" he protested. "I don't say this a lot, but this place is magnificent."

"When you say that this is 'another' Void Ship," asked Ianto, "Are you referring to that sphere from Canary Wharf?"

The Doctor looked surprised. "You catch on quickly."

"I've had lots of practice," Ianto shrugged. "Besides, you see a great mysterious polyhedron appearing in Torchwood Tower out of nowhere, you think of a great mysterious sphere that also appeared out of nowhere."

Impressed, the Doctor told him, "Yes, that sphere was a Void Ship, although judging from what I've seen here, it was very crude. I have no idea where the Daleks developed that technology. Perhaps they stole it."

"So that cyborg I saw earlier," Ianto interrupted, "was that a Helial?"

"I don't think so." The Doctor's face was grim. Ianto started to speak, but then the Doctor continued, "This ship is almost empty except for us, that cyborg, and a few dead Daleks; I would guess that it had been abandoned. The possibility of the Helials' continuing existence is alarming, but if I'm right, what we should be worried about is what is now controlling the ship." He paused. "If I'm right. I just hope it isn't what I think it is."

Donna and Ianto looked at him curiously, but the Doctor didn't elaborate.

They kept walking, until Ianto recognized the three Dalek shells from before.

"It was here," he said, stopping. The Doctor paused to look at him, and Ianto pointed at the pile of ash on the floor close by. "That was Jimmy Stones."

The Doctor winced.

"And the cyborg was right here." Ianto walked to where he knew it had stood before. "She completely ignored us at first, until she saw Stones."

The Doctor ran over, and looked at the controls. "How long ago was this?"

"About half an hour ago."

The Doctor cursed. "Damn! She could have gone anywhere by now." He looked up past the controls at the wall. "You say this room is donut shaped?"

Ianto nodded. The Doctor put a hand on the wall, then pressed his ear against it.

"I think that this is the core of the ship," he said, listening closely. "If I could access the main computer… Let's see, there must be a way inside."

The Doctor stepped back, scrutinizing the wall for a moment, before turning around to look at Ianto. "The Helials use hexagons in their architecture, so if you see any sort of hexagonal panel in the wall, let me know," he instructed. "And be quick about it. We have got to find this cyborg before she finds us."

Ianto nodded and continued down the hall; Donna, on the other hand, looked at him oddly. "What was that all about?" she asked.

The Doctor didn't answer immediately. A wistful look had appeared in his eyes, and though his face was very serious, Donna thought she saw a small, slightly hopeful smile.

"If I'm right, you'll see what this is about," he said quietly. "And if I'm not right, it won't matter."

When Donna looked further confused, the Doctor said quietly, "Your father died a few months after I met you, right?"

Donna nodded, wondering where this was going.

"Imagine that you just found out that he may actually be alive."

Donna stared at him, her brow furrowed. "Doctor, what's going on?" she demanded.

The Doctor opened his mouth, and then closed it again, his expression still dour, but he looked as though he was contemplating how to answer.

"Doctor!" Ianto called, cutting him off. He and Donna looked at each other, then they ran down the hall after him.

"You found something?" asked the Doctor, astonished. "That was fast."

Ianto pointed; just as the Doctor had predicted, there was a hexagonal doorway on the wall between two panels. The door was already open.

"It opened up when I approached it," Ianto told him. "Like automatic doors, you know? But if this is the core of the ship, surely it would be under maximum security?"

The Doctor shrugged. "Somebody in there likes you, I suppose," he said in an overly casual tone that caused Donna and Ianto to both raise eyebrows at him. "Or me," he added.

He grinned, and strolled through the doorway. Donna and Ianto followed, and found themselves in another hallway… or perhaps 'passage' was the better word; it was much smaller than the first corridor they had come through, barely large enough for one man to walk through, and it was much more dimly lit. When they entered, the background resonance that was audible throughout the ship was a bit louder, which fit the Doctor's theory that this part of the ship contained its most important mechanisms.

They could see brighter light at the end of the passage some thirty feet away, however, so the Doctor warned the others to keep quiet, before they slowly crept down the passage. As they neared the light, however, the Doctor turned to Ianto.

"Run back and find Jack," he whispered, so quietly that Ianto leaned closer to hear him. "Show him where to find us. We may need his help."

Ianto nodded, and ran lightly back down the tunnel and out of sight. The Doctor then turned back toward the brightly lit room Donna supposed was the core, took a deep breath, as though he were bracing himself, and peered into the room.

Donna saw the Doctor's face drain of all color, and his eyes began to water. He then stepped into the room, his eyes fixed on a point to his left. Donna entered, and gasped.

They were standing in a large, domed room, with white circuit boards lining the round walls, and there was a console in the center covered with similar controls to the ones outside. The Doctor, however, was looking at a blonde woman standing by the wall, who was watching them closely with a calculating expression, as though she were expecting them. She clearly was the cyborg Ianto had described, judging by the mechanical implants on her face and scalp, and her artificial hand.

"Oh my God," Donna whispered. "Her face!"

The Doctor ignored her. He walked up to the cyborg, until he stood right in front of her, his eyes fixed on hers. The Doctor's right hand twitched, as though he were resisting the urge to touch the woman's face.

"Rose," he whispered, "I'm sorry. I'm so sorry."

Donna gasped again. "Rose? As in Rose Tyler? _Your_ Rose?"

The Doctor shook his head, and stepped back from her. "No," he said. "It's something else; something has taken over her mind."

"But she was dead!" Donna turned back to look at Rose. "You said so yourself!"

"Looks like she survived." The Doctor's voice shook, but then he recollected himself. His horrified expression was replaced by one of fury.

"Who are you?" he demanded of the cyborg. "Identify yourself?"

Rose stepped back, and answered, "_I am designated Eve of the Eternal_."

Her voice, monotonous and half-metallic, made Donna shiver.

"I was right," the Doctor said, his voice dangerously calm. He paced around Eve of the Eternal, and she turned around to continue looking at him. "It's the main computer this ship, an artificial intelligence spliced onto Rose's body and using her mind as a memory base."

"_The knowledge and memories of the human, Rose Tyler, belong to me now_," Eve of the Eternal confirmed. _"Through her, I can access information about you, Doctor of the Tardis, Last of the Time Lords."_

Unfazed, the Doctor asked, "Tell me, how did Rose come to be inside this Void ship? You can talk to me, Eve of the Eternal. Surely her memories tell you that much!"

For the first time, Eve of the Eternal stepped backward, and paced a few steps to the side, her cold eyes never leaving his. _"The Taledrevan Helials were to remain stationary in the Void until the end of the designated Time War, but the transcendentally existential vessel was damaged by a second vessel, one not of Taledrevan making,"_ she told him. _"The collision cracked the Void, and the foreign vessel fell through the breach."_

The Doctor smiled for the first time since he had entered the room, rolling his head back to glance upwards with an enlightened expression as he understood. "So that's where the Daleks' Void Ship came from."

Eve of the Eternal ignored this statement, so the Doctor presumed that he was right. The cyborg continued, _"This vessel was damaged by the collision, so it remained stationary and dysfunctional. As is part of this ship's protocols, it initiated the self-repair program. As the repairs continued, however, the fissure reversed into a deadly spatial breach, through which flowed millions of Daleks and unclassified cybernetic humanoids." _ She turned back toward the Doctor. _"The Helials were greatly alarmed by this, because they feared the Daleks, but after the last of the Daleks appeared, they were followed by a solitary human female. The Helials correctly decided that she must have had something to do with the occurrence, and they needed information concerning those particular Daleks."_

"So they saved her," the Doctor breathed.

Eve of the Eternal bowed her head in a small, acknowledging nod. _"She was dying,"_ she said simply. _"There is no oxygen in the Void, so she was placed on life support. Even then, however, she couldn't be revived."_

"Why not?" asked Donna, still shocked.

"_She had been exposed to the Void."_

Irritated at the cyborg's ambiguous answer, Donna snapped, "What does that mean?"

"_She had been exposed to the Void," _Eve of the Eternal repeated.

Shaking her head, Donna turned to the Doctor for an answer. His anger was replaced by an expression of exhaustion and sadness, but he replied, "The concept of pure nothingness is beyond the comprehension of most species." He glanced at Eve of the Eternal, before continuing, "Imagine it, Donna. No light, no dark, no temperature, no sound nor silence, no touch, no up nor down, not even time."

Donna looked off into space, thinking hard on the Doctor's words, but after a moment, she shook her head again, and the Doctor nodded.

"You can't imagine it, can you?" he said. "It's beyond human comprehension. Rose, however, saw it and felt it: completely nothing." He paused, before adding in a hushed voice, "She must have gone insane."

Hearing this last statement, Eve of the Eternal replied, _"Her condition went beyond insanity. Every neuron in her central nervous system had been disconnected, so that every nervous function, voluntary and involuntary, had stopped. These functions had to be done artificially, so the human was wired cybernetically into the vessel's medical program."_

She turned her face toward her right for a moment, so that the implants would be more visible.

The Doctor nodded, and put his hands in his pockets. "Cybernetic life support; the implants perform the functions for her."

As he spoke, he saw movement behind Eve of the Eternal, and glanced over her shoulder just long enough to see Jack and Martha enter the room quietly, followed by Ianto. The Doctor quickly looked back at Eve of the Eternal, praying that she hadn't noticed.

"All right, so you got Rose breathing again," he said quickly, keeping the cyborg's attention on him. "Then what?"

"_The next task was to repair her neurons,"_ she replied. _"By my relative timeline, this took many months."_

"But surely she's been fixed up by now!" the Doctor cried, again angry. "Why is she still wired up to you?"

"_You forget that there were still Daleks in the Void," _Eve of the Eternal said calmly. _"Desperate to escape it, they attacked this vessel."_

"That's why there's dead Daleks all over the place here," Donna said, also moving in front of Eve of the Eternal, so that she was standing beside the Doctor.

"_Correct. The ship suffered eighty-six percent systems failure, and the primary memory base was destroyed. Only the self-defense and self-repair programs survived. The Helials immediately abandoned this vessel, and in their haste to escape the Daleks they left Rose Tyler, who was still wired into the medical bay." _

The Doctor looked enraged again.

"Then once the Daleks are destroyed, the self-repair programs come on again," he snarled. "You needed something to store your backup data, so you grabbed the nearest thing to a memory base you had: the brain of a human being who conveniently was already wired into your systems!"

Eve of the Eternal said nothing as Donna gasped again at these words. Behind the cyborg, the Doctor noticed Jack pull a small, cylindrical object from one of his pockets, and again, he looked back to keep Eve of the Eternal's attention on them; Donna, however, had beat him too it.

"What about Rose?" she hissed in anger.

The Doctor shook his head. "Rose herself, her consciousness, has been shoved into a corner of her brain, most likely the subconscious, which, to a logical entity like Eve of the Eternal, serves no useful purpose except to subdue the host. Can't have her interfering with operations, can you?" He was now visibly shaking with anger. "Bloody self-repairing ships! Well, thank you, Eve of the Eternal! That was all I needed to now."

He looked past her. "Now, Jack!" he shouted.

Eve of the Eternal swung around just as Jack lunged at her, shoving her against the wall. The former swung her arm upwards to strike at Jack, but he pulled it down and plunged the syringe into her shoulder, and stepped back. Just as rapidly, Eve of the Eternal reached up and grabbed Jack's neck. He gagged as the others ran up to help, but this was unnecessary. She slowed, let go of Jack's throat, and fell back against the wall, her eyes falling shut. She then slid down the wall, completely unconscious. The Doctor ran to her.

If Jack had been upset at Rose's fate, he hid it well. His face held none of the horror that the Doctor's had when he had entered the room, but he too looked tired. "Well, that went smoothly," he said. As he spoke, the ship's pulse slowed to its original pace, and to its original pitch. "Ah!" he exclaimed, relieved. "That's the sound of the system shutting down. It's stopped opening a black hole, then."

"But can't it still control her?" asked Martha as she joined them.

Jack shook his head. "Apparently it needs Rose's brain completely alert, otherwise it would still be forming the black hole. She's unconscious now, so no… I hope."

"The computer isn't," the Doctor pointed out as he gathered Rose in his arms and stood up. "We've got to get her out of here and disconnect her from Eve of the Eternal before it adapts. We also don't want the defense protocols kicking in again, otherwise we'll end up like Jimmy Stones."

As they quitted the room, the Doctor suddenly asked Jack, "And talking of unconsciousness, where did that anesthetic come from?"

Jack shrugged. "I always carry them with me. You never know when they come in handy."

The former snorted. "Knowing you, very frequently."

*********

**The other day I was describing this chapter to my brother, and he said, "So it's like the Library episode, the episode with Madame de Pompadour, and the Borg all at once." That's actually a very apt description. I'm not sure if this chapter should be happy or not; obviously, it was a reunion (sort of), but Rose's situation is hardly happy. I said she had a rough time.  
**

**The next chapter gives further explanation to what has happened to Rose (the Doctor still only knows half of it) as they begin examining her and trying to work out a way to save her. **

**By the way, the quote at the start of the chapter is from T.S. Eliot's "The Wasteland." I'll give you ten out of ten if you already knew that. You'll find out later why Rose hears it.  
**

**Stay tuned for Chapter 8: "Perpetual"**


	9. Chapter 8: Perpetual

Chapter 8

Perpetual

The Doctor had initially expressed fears that Eve of the Eternal's defense protocols would be triggered by Jack's actions, but his fears proved to be groundless. The trip back from the ship's control room, down the main corridor, and out the liquid energy doorway was fairly uneventful. It appeared that Eve of the Eternal needed Rose totally conscious to function as a computer, meaning that it truly was a cyborg; the machine could not function without the organism.

On the other hand, Jack's assertion that the system had shut down, based on the change of frequency in the engines' pulse, was far more accurate. All of the protocols, most importantly those of defense, appeared to have been deactivated, because when the party exited the Void Ship, they saw that the accretion of electrical energy, the ship's inner glow, and the whirlpool of light had vanished. Jack had been right; the potential black hole had closed.

But nobody was given time to breathe a sigh of relief. Jack immediately turned to Ianto and told him, "Go downstairs. Find Gwen and Colonel Mace—tell them what happened. Tell them to remain alert, but that's all they can do." He turned toward the Tardis. "It's all in the Doctor's hands now."

Ianto nodded, and obediently quitted the room. The Doctor and the others, however, had already entered the Tardis. Jack followed; guessing that the Doctor had taken Rose to the infirmary, he exited the console room and turned into the adjacent corridor. The infirmary wasn't far from the control room—only one door down from Jack's left.

While in the Void Ship, Jack and Martha hadn't gotten far in their search for the cyborg Ianto claimed to have seen, before he came rushing down their end of the control room to tell then that the Doctor had found something and would need their help. So they followed Ianto past the point where the cyborg originally was seen and into the core of the ship.

Jack had entered first, as per his standard due to his immortality, but nothing happened. He could, however, hear voices at the other end of the tunnel: one the Doctor's and the other a cybernetic voice similar to that of a Cyberman, but female. Remembering the violence that had taken place when Lisa Hallett tried to take control of Torchwood, Jack entered the brightly lit room, bracing himself for the worst. What he saw was not what he expected.

He had nearly been overcome with shock when he saw who the cyborg was, but when he recovered himself, Jack noticed that the Doctor seemed to deliberately draw Rose's attention away from him and Martha, and toward himself and Donna. After a moment of eavesdropping, Jack heard enough, and pulled the anesthetic from his pocket.

He still didn't know the details, but if there was anything Jack did know, it was that he would not rest until Rose Tyler was restored to her former self.

********

As Jack entered the infirmary, the Doctor gently lowered Rose onto an examination table. Martha and Donna immediately stepped up to get a better look at her; Donna, who was nearest, hesitantly ran her fingers over one of Rose's implants, half fascinated, half horrified.

"Don't damage or pull out the implants," the Doctor warned her sharply.

Donna immediately withdrew her hand, as though the implant had burned her. "That would kill her?" she asked, looking up at the Doctor, who had bent down over a smaller table, sorting through a toolbox.

He nodded. "Rose's mind is still connected to Eve of the Eternal. All the neurotransmitters in her brain are also sending interactive signals as well as electrical impulses. If we pull the implant off her, not only could it damage the brain tissues, but it would also cause an electrical surge."

Martha had also bent down over Rose's face, scrutinizing the implants with a professional fascination, but not touching them. "Then how do we help her?" she asked without looking up. Donna reflected on their good fortune that Martha was a doctor herself, and would be able to help out more than most.

The Doctor straightened up, a small, silvery instrument in his hand, and stood at the head of the table, so that he was looking right down at Rose's face. He bent down, and lifted his hand to trace her forehead gently. "We're going to have to get Eve of the Eternal to release its hold on her," he answered Martha quietly. "Otherwise, there's no way to separate machine from flesh."

Jack, still standing by the door, spoke up for the first time. "If we're going to disconnect Rose from this computer, we're first going to have to find out exactly what it did to her, internally as well as externally."

"Good point." The Doctor raised Rose's right arm, and pressed the instrument against her upper arm. There was a small click, and the Doctor put her arm down. He turned and handed the instrument to Jack.

"It's collected a blood sample," he told him. "Martha, I want you and Jack to analyze Rose's blood, and her DNA."

Martha straightened, and followed Jack into a back room. "Do you know how to use the blood analyzer?" she asked him as they went.

The others didn't hear Jack's reply. The Doctor turned back to look at Rose sadly, while Donna scrutinized his former companion curiously. Unconscious, Rose was a picture of serenity, not at all the cold, emotionless cyborg that they had met on board that Void Ship.

When Donna had first met the Doctor it had taken her a while to trust him, and Rose's death was the primary reason. Donna had been pulled into the Tardis on her wedding day, several months after the incident at Canary Wharf, but for the Doctor, it was only a few moments after. He had been in complete shock at Donna's appearance, but when she took the time to look at him more closely, she saw that he was also in anguish at his loss.

Mostly out of anger at missing her wedding, Donna had initially decided that the Doctor was to blame for his friend's death, and wasn't willing to place her life in his hands, up until the moment that they first faced the Racnoss under the Thames barrier.

But now here she was; Rose Tyler was alive, but only just.

The Doctor bent low over Rose's face, studying the implants. The largest one was attached to her temple, and the wires and tubes, most of which were inserted into various places on her scalp, ran from this particular implant. The mechanism ran further down Rose's cheek, past her jawbone and across her neckline; there it attached to another implant, which was attached around her neck like a collar.

"Fascinating," the Doctor whispered, pointing his sonic screwdriver at the main implant. His voice had lost all trace of horror and sadness as he turned his attention back to the problem at hand. "That appears to be an extension of the main computer; the wires and tubes all feed into her brain, with the original purpose of using advanced, automated microsurgery to repair her central nervous system."

"What about the collar?" asked Donna.

The Doctor ran his screwdriver along said mechanism, scanning it carefully. "It's connected directly to her brain stem, making sure that her heart and lungs are working." He stepped back, looking slightly relieved. "That implant kept Rose alive, but her mind is repaired now, so her vital organs should be working independently again. There's no medical complications, so once we separate her from Eve of the Eternal, she should go back to normal."

"Do you think she's aware in there?" Donna asked quietly, voicing the question she had wondered since the Doctor's conversation with Eve of the Eternal.

The Doctor didn't answer for a while; he simply scrutinized Rose, looking both worried and contemplative.

"I hope not," he answered finally. "So much has happened in the last few hours that I wouldn't want Rose to be aware of. First of all, there's no telling how long she was on that Void Ship, and how much she'd remember, if she is aware."

"But…" Donna waved her hand at the motionless woman on the table. "What if she's been watching all this time? What if she saw that Jimmy Stones's death, or if she saw being abandoned there, or that Eve of the Eternal tried to kill Jack?"

The Doctor opened his mouth, and then closed it again; he clearly didn't know how to answer this question, something that didn't happen very often. But then he didn't have to answer, because their thoughts were suddenly interrupted by said immortal companion. There was a sudden exclamation from the back room, followed by Jack swearing loudly.

Donna and the Doctor both jumped and looked at the back room. The Doctor looked curious and wary, and Donna groaned.

"I think that was the sound of the other shoe dropping," she said dryly.

A moment later, Jack reappeared in the infirmary, looking furious. He was followed by a clearly upset Martha.

"What's happened now?" asked the Doctor in alarm.

"Cybernetic life support?" Jack repeated his words from earlier incredulously. "Doctor, that computer completely rewrote Rose's DNA! She's not even really human anymore!"

Whatever the Doctor was expecting, it wasn't that. "Let me see!" he said, dashing past Jack to join him and Martha in the back room. Donna followed, with Jack bringing up the rear. None of them noticed Rose's unconscious form shift a little, and the mechanical fingers slowly curl and uncurl.

********

"You gave me life! What else have you given me!" the Dalek shrieked as she backed further against the bulkhead, terrified and confused, unsure of whether it meant to kill her or not. _"I can't get out,' said the starling—God help thee! Said I, but I'll let thee out, cost what it will; so I turn'd about the cage to get to the door; it was twisted and double twisted so fast with wire, there was no getting it open without pulling the cage to pieces."_ She and the Doctor backed against the stone wall, protected only by an iron gate, but the dead, manipulated by the Gelth like marionettes, pushed against it, their arms reaching through the bars to grasp at them. The Doctor took her hand: "I'm so glad I met you," he told her with a small smile.

The wolf whimpered as the scorpion flexed its tail again, readying itself to administer its poison again, even though the wolf appeared to have given up. It lay in its cage, looking weaker and unhealthier than ever, its entire form quivering. But the calls it had made previously were enough for help to arrive. Suddenly, the cage was illuminated with fiery orange light, and the wolf opened its eyes to see that a phoenix had materialized between it and the scorpion, screeching angrily, its wings and its fire outstretched, protecting the crying beast in the cage, and its talons clawing at the scorpion, beating it back.

_On the eve of the Day of Imperial Observance, a report from the Mutter's Spiral galaxy reached the Senate of Taledrev that the empire of Skaro had descended upon the desert planet Gallifrey in the zenith of the Chronarchs' revolution. Surrounded by ten million Dalek battleships, the Gallifreyans were outnumbered and unprepared for the assault; nevertheless they managed to hold back the Daleks' attack and push them out of their planet's atmosphere, but were now under siege. Debate immediately commenced among the Senators on what action to take concerning the arising Time War._

********

"The first thing we noticed was that the scanner couldn't classify Rose's DNA, so we took a closer look," Jack told the Doctor, who was bent over the computer screen with his plastic-rimmed glasses on, scrutinizing the results. "She's got the same four nucleobases that all Earth biology has, but there are two alien nucleobases I've never seen before."

"Why change her DNA?" asked Donna, who stood beside the Doctor, also staring at the scans.

"Could have been any reason," the Doctor said, his voice intense. "Maybe Eve of the Eternal couldn't function properly with a human body, and changed her simply for compatibility, or maybe its medical program wasn't certain how to fix a human body; that's happened in the past with nanogenes, as you well know, Jack."

He shot Jack an irritated look, and the latter threw his hands up in the air. "You make one mistake, just one…" he grumbled.

"It's worse than that," Martha said, cutting Jack off. "That was only the first thing we noticed… before this happened."

Martha turned a dial, and backtracked the scanner to show the DNA two minutes previously. "Watch the DNA… keep watching." She pointed at the sequence locked in the double helix. "Watch her DNA…"

A second later, the double helix suddenly unraveled itself; one strand of DNA broke apart as a new strand wound its way up the other. Then the second strand likewise broke apart, and similarly a new strand fell in place. This all happened in a split second, but one could hardly miss it.

"What was that?" asked Donna, looking stunned.

"Her DNA just replaced itself," the Doctor told her. He looked just as upset as Martha. "Just like Lazarus."

Martha nodded understandingly.

"But this…" The Doctor waved his hand at the scanner. "This is different. There are no flaws, there's no mutation. It's perfect."

"Doctor," Jack snapped irritably, "stop speaking in circles. What's happening to Rose?"

The Doctor sighed. "She is regenerating."

There was a long, uneasy silence. Then Martha said, "I thought only Time Lords regenerate."

He shook his head. "Rose is not regenerating like a Time Lord. We regenerate suddenly and violently on the cellular level, when we are close to death. When that happens, our physical appearance changes, and certain, minor aspects of our personality change too, but our essence remains… and Time Lords can only regenerate twelve times." The Doctor took a breath, and glanced at Martha and Jack before turning his gaze back to the screen. "But what's happening here is quiet and cyclical, a more refined version of what Richard Lazarus was trying to achieve. It's not just Rose's cells; her DNA itself is regenerating, and it's regenerating _perpetually._"

"I thought you said regeneration didn't work like that," Martha argued. "You remember what happened when Lazarus tried it."

"What Lazarus did was unnatural and artificial," the Doctor replied, his voice foreboding. "But some races perpetually regenerate by nature. For some, this is a quirk of evolution."

Jack instantly picked up on the Doctor's line of thought. "The Helials could do this?"

"Yes," the Doctor confirmed. "I said that the Helials were almost as ancient as the Time Lords, and this is why they lasted so long. They regenerate on the molecular level, every moment, every day, meaning that a Helial's lifespan is unlimited... so long as they have sustenance."

"And that's what's happening to Rose," Donna said.

The Doctor nodded glumly. "Eve of the Eternal needed Rose alive, and it couldn't have her aging or dying, so thinking like any computer, it eliminated the problem. Using nanosurgery to add the Helials' regeneration element, it threw away telomerase incongruities, and it also removed any anomalies in the nucleotide sequence, thus preventing throwbacks similar to that creature Lazarus mutated into. Basically, she's not immortal, but she'll never age."

He leaned back in his chair, his face very pale. "Now I really, _really_ hope that Rose isn't aware in there. With this going on, there's no way to tell by appearance or even by genetic analysis how old she is. She could have been in that Void Ship for a million respective years, and she wouldn't have aged a day."

********

"The Helials could perpetually regenerate, and they were an empire?" Martha asked.

They were gathered in the infirmary again, sitting on uncomfortable chairs close to where Rose lay. After the Doctor confirmed what Jack and Martha had discovered, they led him away from the scanner and out the back room. They had then shoved him into a chair, so that they could work out a course of action.

The Doctor was still very shocked, but he was able to answer Martha's question. "A formidable empire… in fact, perpetual regeneration was the reason they were such an expansive empire. After they gained the regeneration element, they overpopulated their planet very rapidly. Just by the nature of their existence, the Helials had to spread out in order to prevent their home world from spending eternity in chaos. They spread and conquered, and everywhere they went, they eventually overpopulated."

"Therefore they wouldn't have stopped until they had overrun the whole universe."

The Doctor shook his head. "They wouldn't have even stopped there. The Helials had Void Ships, which means they must have been masters at travel between parallel universes. Once they had conquered this universe, they would have moved on to another, and then another."

He stared off into space. "The extent of creation is infinite, but the lifespan of Helian civilization could also have been infinite. It would have been a never-ending race."

"Are they still in the Void?" asked Donna, looking very worried.

The Doctor shrugged. "There's no way to tell, is there?"

Jack looked at the examination table. "What about Rose?" he asked in a hushed voice. "Let's say we successfully disconnect Eve of the Eternal from her… but what about her DNA? Is there any way to change it back?"

"No," the Doctor said sullenly. "Once the regeneration element is there, it's permanent. Any damage or change to her DNA, and it will just rewrite itself again. Rose is stuck like this."

They all fell into silence again, each to their own thoughts, so that the only sound was the hum of the Tardis, and the ticking of a clock on the opposite wall. It was hard to say how long they remained thus, but then a movement on the examination caught the Doctor's eye, and he leapt up when he saw Rose's head slowly turn toward them. Her eyes were still shut, which showed that she was still unconscious, but clearly the drug was starting to wear off.

********

**The situation seems to get stickier with every chapter, doesn't it? Keep giving reviews, because I like to see your opinions, and perhaps even guesses to what's going to happen next.**

**There's another literary quote written in the "Rose" point of view, which you probably noticed. It's an excerpt form Laurence Sterne's "A Sentimental Journey through France and Italy," which is famously known as "Sterne's Starling." **

**Half of the next chapter is already written; if it doesn't appear right away, that will be because of other obligations. I'm going to warn you in advance; there is a portion of the chapter that everyone is going to find confusing, readers and fictional characters. It even confuses me, and I'm the one who wrote it. **

**Next week: Chapter 9: Subconscious**


	10. Chapter 9: Subconscious

Chapter 9

Subconscious

"We need her in a sitting position for this to work," the Doctor said. Martha looked at him oddly.

"Why?"

Jack snorted. "These things are really temperamental. The best results tend to come if they're level with a center of gravity. I don't know what you're doing with one, Doctor."

Martha and Donna both looked at the device in bewilderment: a steel instrument clearly designed to fit around a person's head. The inside of the device was lined with what looked like lenses and scan units.

"What is it, anyway?" asked Donna. It vaguely reminded her of the crested helmets that the Romans wore.

"Forty-ninth Century equivalent of an EEG scanner," Jack told her. "They get far more sophisticated readings of brain activity than those of the twenty-first century, and are much less of a hassle to use; instead of attaching hundreds of electrodes to the patient's scalp, you simply put the cap on and flip the switch, but as I said, temperamental. And you accuse me of using a piece of junk, Doc?"

The Doctor wasn't amused. "It's the sort of thing we need for this, so stop complaining," he retorted. "And anyway, by your own calculations, we've only got about fifteen minutes before the drug wears off, so give us a hand here."

Jack rolled his eyes, and then slid his hands under Rose's back and knees; the Doctor did the same. Then the two of them lifted her off the table and sat her down in one of the chairs; Rose's head bowed down limply. The Doctor then straightened and picked up the metal cap, which he then placed carefully on top of Rose's head. Beside him, Jack set up a matching screen on a small table placed by the chair.

"It's taking a scan," Jack told the Doctor. "Keep her head level."

The Doctor placed both hands on Rose's head and held it in a straightened position.

"That's better." Jack squinted at the screen.

"Martha, Donna," the Doctor said, looking up at the two women. "Keep an eye on the heart monitor. We'll know she's regaining consciousness when her heart starts to speed up."

Martha nodded, and she and Donna crossed the room to a screen on the opposite wall, which showed a line rising and falling at a slow pace.

"If the drug's already starting to wear off," Martha muttered, "then her heart must have been going _really _slowly an hour ago."

"Scanner's starting to process the information," Jack said. He paused, and then raised his eyebrows. "Hmm. Doc, look at this."

The Doctor looked over, and Jack turned the screen so the Doctor could see it. An image of a brain appeared there, with white spots indicating the metal implants. The image was mostly shown in red, surrounded by splotches of yellow and a few in blue. He frowned.

"Blimey." He looked from the screen to Rose, and back again. "That's a lot of neural activity for an unconscious person; her entire brain's humming."

"Must be the interactive signals," Jack put in. "You said that the computer isn't unconscious itself."

"Doctor," Donna called from across the room. "Her pulse is starting to increase."

That gave the Doctor pause. "By how much?" he asked.

"Not much," said Martha. "Only a few beats per minute, but if it continues to increase at this rate…" Her voice trailed off.

"Thanks, Martha," the Doctor said sincerely. "Keep watching it, and let me know if it goes any higher. Now, it looks like the hottest spot for neural activity is in the frontal lobe. That's where memory is typically stored, I believe."

He frowned, looking thoughtful. "That must be the database… and as for the blue…"

But as the Doctor's eyes moved toward the blue regions, Rose's head fell slightly, and the image immediately vanished; it was replaced by the word SCANNING. The Doctor and Jack both let out roars of frustration.

"I told you!" Jack snarled. "Don't let her head move, Doctor! The system has to reboot each time she so much as twitches!"

"I know, I know!" the Doctor yelled. "I don't need reminding! Let's think what we just saw."

"Doctor," Martha called, but the Doctor didn't hear her. His brow was furrowed in concentration.

"Come on," he said, running his hand through his hair; his other hand remained under Rose's chin, holding her head in position. "Think, think, think! Red is increased brain activity, blue is low. If I remember right, the regions in blue were the lobes with the subconscious."

"They would have been blue because she's unconscious," Jack reminded him. "You don't dream while unconscious, do you?"

"Yes." The Doctor opened his eyes, his fingers still in his hair. "But blue means low, not none. Something is going on in there."

"Doctor," Martha repeated, but again, the Doctor didn't hear her.

"So the database is going. There's a storm of information in her head, but apart from that, she's unable to move or function, but from what we've seen, the parts in blue are mainly the subconscious." The Doctor's eyebrows elevated, the expression he usually had when he was on to something. "That part of the brain is unconscious, but because of Eve of the Eternal, the rest is humming, meaning that something in Rose's subconscious has to be working for Eve of the Eternal to…"

"DOCTOR!" Martha and Donna shouted at the same time. At that moment, several things happened at once.

The Doctor, suddenly realizing that Martha and Donna had been trying to get his attention, looked up to see that Rose's heartbeat had reached a healthy pulse of seventy-one beats per minute… but never before had that been so alarming. Jack let out a yell of surprise as the image came back on the screen, but this time, the spots that previously were in blue were now in yellow. As the Doctor's eyes fell on the scanner, he immediately looked back to Rose just in time to see her eyes snap open. Her head turned and her eyes fell on the Doctor, and before anyone could say or do anything, she reached for the Doctor with her mechanical hand, and the metal fingers closed around his throat.

Jack leapt up and tried to prise the fingers from the Doctor's neck, but they seemed to be frozen into place. Martha and Donna rushed over to help, but then they all paused as the Doctor said quite clearly and calmly, "Going to kill me, Eve of the Eternal?"

He was looking directly into Rose's eyes. "Well?" he asked. "What are you waiting for? You've got me. I've sabotaged your ship and removed you from it. Surely that ought to set off the survival programs. Your hand's around my neck, so why aren't you strangling me?"

There was a very long, strained silence. The Doctor scrutinized Rose intently as the others watched, all of them looking from one to the other, unsure of what to do or how to respond. Rose's face was still completely expressionless, the face of the emotionless entity that had taken control of her. Her countenance showed absolutely no sign either of backing down or continuing with what the defenses surely required Eve of the Eternal to proceed with. But her eyes said differently.

The Doctor's mouth fell open as he looked directly into her eyes, and realized with a jolt that when she last was conscious, her eyes were as cold and emotionless as her face… but this time the Doctor could see emotion burning behind those hazel orbs, and that emotion was fear.

Then Rose's lips parted slightly, and a sound rattled out: "Doctor…"

The Doctor stared, forgetting about the mechanical fingers that still held his neck tightly, but not tightly enough to compress his windpipe. He felt his hearts start to quicken.

"Doctor," she said again.

It was Jack who spoke first: "Rose?"

"Doctor…"

"It's her!" the Doctor whispered in stunned disbelief. "It's Rose! She's fighting it!"

"Doctor, the image has gone all red," Jack told him as he glanced at the scanner. "All of her lobes are active; and the subconscious has gone _dark_ red."

"There's a psychological war going on inside her head," the Doctor said, his voice hoarse.

"Hold on," Donna said, "if she can fight Eve of the Eternal, she can regain control of herself. Does that mean that Rose can separate herself from it?"

"Donna, you're a genius!" the Doctor said. Then he gagged as the fingers tightened a little. "Damn!" he hissed. "Seems Eve of the Eternal's just as determined as Rose is."

"She's losing control," Jack said. "That's the problem. Rose can put up a fight if her will is dead set against Eve of the Eternal's… but Eve does not tire. Rose does."

"But that's it!" the Doctor whispered. "Donna, you've just found the key to her freedom: it's a two-way connection! We don't need to disconnect Rose from Eve of the Eternal; she can disconnect herself! But it takes enormous mental concentration for her to do so, and she tires very quickly."

"The second she weakens, Eve of the Eternal regains control," Jack summed up.

The Doctor gagged again in confirmation to Jack's words, and his fingers grasped at Rose's wrist as he tried to pull her hand off him, but to no avail.

"Doctor…" Rose rasped again. Her voice was even weaker. "Strength… numbers… help…"

Then she fell silent again, but the Doctor's eyes had widened.

"Jack, take the sonic screwdriver," he said, his voice calm again. "It's in my left pocket. Hold it against the implant on her temple, setting three hundred and twenty-four."

Jack hesitated, then stooped down and put his hand in the Doctor's coat pocket, rummaging around until he found what he was looking for. He then stood, the screwdriver in his hands, and he twisted it to the right settings. He then walked around the Doctor, and aimed the screwdriver at the implant.

"What are you going to do?" Jack asked.

Instead of answering, the Doctor let go of Rose's wrist. He then raised both his hands and placed his fingers on Rose's temples.

"I'm asking you to do this because you know Rose," he said to Jack. "Watch her face. The moment you see Rose—the Rose you know—show in her countenance, use the screwdriver."

The Doctor's fingers pressed against Rose's temple, and her eyes shut. Then the Doctor shut his eyes, and made contact. He was completely unprepared for what happened next.

********

_Here is no water but only rock. Rock and no water and the sandy road. _ Pain… there was a lot of emotion agony that rent the air. A fifteen year old Rose Tyler watched sadly as a twenty year old Mickey Smith wept in anguish, and an inexpensive coffin bearing the body of Rita Smith was lowered into the ground. _We therefore commit her body to the ground; earth to earth, ashes to ashes, dust to dust. _

A wolf clawed at the bars of its cage, snarling loudly, but its captor, a giant black scorpion of roughly the same size, would not relent. Its sting darted through the bars of the cage, and the wolf howled in pain… but still it stood its ground and snarled even more angrily. _Things aren't the way they were before. You wouldn't even recognize me anymore…_

"There's got to be some way!" Pete Tyler cried out, twisting around in a Cyberman's grasp to look behind him. "Maybe we can reverse it!" The daughter he never knew shook her head despairingly. "There's nothing we can do," she said, knowing that she was condemning Jackie Tyler to live the rest of her life as a Cyberman.

_What is that noise now? What is the wind doing? Nothing again nothing. _

She was seven, and Jackie had not come home that night. Rose curled up in her bed, overcome with worry and bewilderment, her face streaked with tears. There was no noise, except for the muffled sounds of cars and the occasional shouts of people, who neither knew nor cared that a frightened seven-year-old girl was alone without her mother. Why was her Mum not here? Why was she alone?

_The decision of the Senate of Taledrev was unanimous. It was better by far for the Helials to not involve themselves in the Time War. There were some who considered to lend their assistance to the Time Lords, due to the dual threat that the Daleks posed for both Gallifrey and Taledrev, but the words of Delvidir Taelmarr Drunnor, the prominent general, convinced the Senators of the military's proposed course of action: "Why should we? I defy anyone in this hall to give a convincing argument that can justify intervening. Why assist the Time Lords, the very same upstarts who stand in the way of our much-needed expansion? They retain a large portion of the Universe which we will eventually need to colonize, and how do they deserve it? We can civilize and enhance the civilizations in the Mutter's Spiral; the Time Lords ignore them."_

She was strapped in an uncomfortable seat in a spaceship, with her eyes shut and her heart pounding, as though it were making an extra effort to cling to life, in fierce denial of the inevitable. But she could even see the red light through her eyelids, the deadly storm of plasma and materials, and the darkness in the center as all matter was crushed. There was nothing, no point in fighting anymore, no escape, no hope, because the black hole's nature was far more powerful than her will. _Between the conception And the creation, Between the emotion And the response Falls the Shadow. _

"_Why assist the pompous Time Lord Elders? The Daleks are our enemies, but the Time Lords are our enemies too; I therefore propose a different solution: isolation. We will follow the Time Lords' old policy and stay well away from the Time War. We build Void-traveling Vessels and remove the Helian race from this universe, to wade out the Time War in the Void until it ends. Mark my words, the Time War can only end in stalemate or in the destruction of both Skaro and Gallifrey. Without the Daleks or the Time Lords, what is there to hold us back? The glory of Taledrev will extend to Mutter's Spiral!"_

It was though some superhuman force had rent her body and soul; the pain was so intense, so all-consuming that she no longer knew who she was. The light penetrated every cell of her body, burning as it did, and though she was paralyzed by the agony, internally she screamed. "What's happening to me?" she cried. The voice of the Tardis replied, "You desired this. You have absorbed my heart and my essence. You looked into the Time Vortex, and now we coalesce. The Doctor will be preserved."

_I dream of rain, I dream of gardens in the desert sand, I wake in vain, I dream of love as time runs through my hand._ "Rose, hold on!" the Doctor shouted. She could feel the breach tugging at her, some unseen force that literally lifted her from the floor and pulled her away. She clutched the lever desperately, her fingers screaming in protest, but as they weakened, the Void's pull grew stronger, and she knew it was no good.

_This is the way the world ends. This is the way the world ends. This is the way the world ends. Not with a bang but a whimper._

"Goodbye, Doctor," she mouthed, her eyes never leaving his. Then she gave up, and let go. The further she fell, the louder the wind howled, until she could no longer hear the Doctor's screams for the roar as the breach started to close, and she shut her eyes, waiting for oblivion to consume her.

"_Do you know nothing? Do you see nothing? Do you remember Nothing?" _I remember those are pearls that were his eyes._ "Are you alive, or not? Is there nothing in your head?"_

********

As the onslaught of data and memories came to its end, the Doctor felt the breach close and the feeling of falling overwhelmed him. The feel of nothingness penetrated him, and he shut his eyes against the Void, hiding his face from hell itself. But as quickly as the falling started, it ended, and the Doctor felt darkness take him.

The first thing he was aware of was the smell of dew and rain, and he felt cool moisture on his skin. Then he became aware of the sounds of animals and wind all around him, and he opened his eyes and sat up.

He was sitting on a damp road constructed of mossy, hexagonal stones, and all around him, he could see trees with magenta bark branching out over him, water dripping from their cerulean leaves. He stood, and stared, awestruck, at a stunning view of these trees growing in what appeared to be a swamp of strange plants and fungi: beside him, a spidery, flat vine, deep blue in color, wound up the road and climbed its way up a tree. Turquoise lichen covered a rock just below the ridge he stood on, and about twenty feet before him, an enormous flower with blue petals grew from the water, dark purple fronds extending from beneath it, like an enormous water lily. As he stared at this landscape, a three-legged frog-like creature with a spiny ridge down its back ambled its way across the lily's gigantic leaves, and dipped its head in the clear water.

The Doctor turned his gaze away from this magnificent scene and looked up the road, which wound its way up a mesa. He didn't know how or why, but something was nagging at him, telling him that he needed to follow that road. So he did, wandering past more of these strange, blue plants and tall ridges where equally strange animals blinked at him from burrows.

As was typical in dreams, he did not tire as he clambered up a staircase made from the hexagonal bricks. He wondered, as he walked, how this place had become the world hovering on Rose's subconscious, because he couldn't recall ever taking Rose to this planet. He supposed that it was a place that was detailed in Eve of the Eternal's database.

Then as the road turned past the curve of the mesa, he saw it: a wooden building stood about four stories high, similar in architecture to a Japanese castle, and in the center a hexagonal tower extended upwards one last story, like a pagoda or a stupa; it was situated on a shoreline that extended out into a misty seascape. The edifice faced the sea, and across the waters the Doctor could see two suns setting on the horizon.

That same nagging feeling pushed him forward; something was telling him that the solution was waiting inside that building, and he kept walking until he stood in a garden filled with the bluish plants. On the other side of the garden was a small door, and not taking the time to continue examining the plants, the Doctor calmly walked to the door, and opened it.

The doorway led to a large, clean room with pieces of furniture neatly arranged along the walls and before a small fireplace. The walls were dark red or leafy green in color with wood panels, and lined with bands of gold; there were no pictures, nothing to indicate any habitation.

Then he thought of the pagoda, and that nagging feeling returned. The Doctor looked around, and a staircase caught his eye; he climbed it and found himself in a large corridor of the same design as the room downstairs. The Doctor glanced around again, and caught sight of another door with windows of green glass. He opened this, and saw a hexagonal atrium extending to the floor below and above him the next two; at the top he could see a wooden ceiling with a bright, iron chandelier, above which he supposed the pagoda was built.

He looked around again, and caught sight, two sides to the left, of what looked promisingly like an elevator. So he made his way forward and turned the handle, and the door swung open; he stepped inside, shut the door, and then turned a gold handle he had found to his left side upward.

Immediately the lift gently ascended, the shaft spiraling past him as he climbed, and he caught glimpses of the other floors as he went; then the lift slowed, and came to a stop. Hearts hammering in his chest, the Doctor reached forward, opened the elevator door, and stepped into the pagoda.

It was a magnificent room with green walls about fifteen feet high, and a starry, domed ceiling, lit by a lamp hovering in the center of the ceiling which had been designed to look like a sun. Four of the six walls, two to his left, and two to his right, held bookshelves constructed from a red-brown wood, probably from the trees outside, and the last wall, directly across the room from him, had a glass door which led to what looked like a balcony. Then what he saw next made his hearts skip a beat.

To his left, in front of one of the bookshelves, a desk, made from the same wood as the shelves, was built into the floor, and a familiar blonde woman was slumped against it, her head resting in the crook of her left elbow forlornly.

The Doctor ran over, stopping only when he was standing right above Rose, and he reached forward and placed his hand on her shoulder. When she made no reaction, he wondered if she was asleep.

"You've arrived," a frail voice breathed. Then she raised her head and sat up, looking directly into his eyes. "I hoped you'd come."

The Doctor looked around, and drew up another chair, sitting down beside her. He then took her hand, and studied her face intently.

Rose looked exhausted; her face was very pallid, and there were dark marks encircling her eyes. She tried to smile weakly, but even that proved to be too great an effort, and she shut her eyes and leaned forward heavily.

The Doctor's hearts broke, and he covered her hand with both of his, choking back tears. "Rose, I---"

She opened her eyes again and looked at him tiredly.

"I'm sorry," he continued, swallowing the lump that had formed in his throat. "I'm so sorry for what's been done to you."

A single, desperate tear trailed down Rose's cheek. She blinked a couple of times, and whispered, "I can't fight it much longer. It's so hard."

She sounded like a lost child when she spoke, and the Doctor lifted his hand to trace her jaw line. "You're tired," he said quietly, and Rose whimpered.

"Help me, Doctor," she pled. "I can't do this alone."

"Rest for a moment," the Doctor said gently. "Eve of the Eternal won't take over again; it can't, not while I'm in here."

Rose sighed, and leaned back in her chair, withdrawing her hand from a panel on the desk, from which she had been trying to regain control of herself. The Doctor hesitated, then leaned forward and pulled her into his lap, cradling her in his arms. There she relaxed, and buried her face into his shoulder. He shut his eyes and stroked her hair, torn with guilt at her weakened state, but reveling in the feel of her there once again. Then she began shaking, and he realized that she was sobbing into his shoulder… and he cried too.

********

After a minute, Rose's weeping subsided; she didn't have the strength to continue crying, but she didn't pull away. The Doctor had no idea how long he sat there with Rose in his arms, but he kept her close, giving her as much rest and comfort as he could. It could have been minutes, hours, or even days that they stayed there, before Rose shifted in his arms, and then slid out of his lap. She stood, and then tugged his hand beckoningly, and he stood too. She then led him out of the room and out onto the balcony, from which he could see that one of the twin suns had yet to disappear from the horizon.

Rose nodded at a bench to their left, and they both sat down, hand in hand, watching the sunset. Rose lay her head into his shoulder wearily, and then she spoke up.

"I was so afraid," she said. "I didn't know what was happening to me at first. I've dwelt here ever since I became aware again, but there's always a second presence. When I shut my eyes, I can see what's happening in the real world… and I can't ever stop. The monotonous voice that always repeats numbers inside my head, it never, ever stops."

Rose's eyes watered again. "I killed him…" she moaned, and the Doctor knew she was speaking of Jimmy Stones. "I killed him and I tried to kill you too."

"No," he whispered, squeezing her hand reassuringly. "Eve of the Eternal killed him. That thing that disintegrated Stones, the thing that tried to strangle me… that wasn't you, Rose. You stopped Eve of the Eternal from killing me. You saved my life."

This didn't put Rose at ease. "It _used_ me. It uses my memories, my knowledge, and it _hurts_, Doctor. What happened with Stones… it wasn't just my memories that led the computer to kill him. I saw everything that happened, and the moment I saw his face… I was so angry. I wanted to blast him into oblivion… and that's exactly what happened. That bloody computer uses everything I have to do everything that I wouldn't."

The Doctor placed his arm around Rose's shoulder, letting her talk.

"It uses me," she whispered. "It manipulates me, and it shoved me into a corner of my brain. I'm a virtual slave, stuck in a virtual reality, I've been like this for too long, and it hurts so badly."

"I'm sorry, Rose," the Doctor repeated. "If I had known… I would have tried to rescue you a long time ago."

Rose raised her head and looked at him again. Then tears ran down her face, and her head bowed forward. The Doctor leaned his forehead against hers, and he placed his hand on her cheek tenderly.

********

**Confused? I'd be amazed if you weren't. That section with the quotes and Rose's memories was exactly as the Doctor described it: a storm of information, or a psychological battle. It is meant to appear random, but what tends to appear are memories or quotes concerning death, loneliness, escape, or survival. Many thanks go to T.S. Eliot for his fascinating style of poetry: most of the quotes are from his works (**_**The Wasteland, **_**and **_**The Hollow Men)**_**, but a few others are probably ones you recognize: the songs "Desert Rose" by Sting, and "In the End," by Linkin Park; the funeral passage from **_**The Book of Common Prayer**_**; and the rest are Rose's memories and historical passages from Eve of the Eternal's database. **

**There's only two chapters left for "Eve of the Eternal." I can't believe I actually have gotten this far; normally when I start a fan fiction, I don't ever finish it, but this idea seemed such a good idea that I wanted to continue. I've just started planning the second story in the series, and hopefully that will soon be ready to be posted. **

**Thank you so much for reading this! **


	11. Chapter 10: Incongruent Reality

Chapter 10

Incongruent Reality

The Doctor and Rose sat on the bench in silence for quite some time, watching the twin suns setting across the horizon. Rose appeared to be falling asleep, but the Doctor remained as alert as ever. He was an interference, and he could feel that; his presence had paralyzed Eve of the Eternal's domination of Rose's mind and body, and he knew that sooner or later, the computer would attempt to push him out. He could already feel it studying him, but he kept his mind on the situation at hand.

His position was clear now. It was either disconnect Eve of the Eternal, risking Rose's life in the process, or condemn Rose to a permanent, eternal state of imprisonment; she surely would not be able to put up a second fight after this, and the Doctor would rather see Rose die than put her in such a situation, so it was now or never.

The world around them grew darker, and the sounds of the forest outside began to quiet, though the murmur of the ocean winds did not. Then, as the last sun set, the object of the Doctor's thoughts stirred, as though she could hear his thoughts. _Perhaps she can_, he reflected.

"I'm ready."

The Doctor looked at Rose. She still looked tired, but a new determination appeared in her eyes, a look he immediately recognized from her days on the Tardis. Smiling, he asked her, "Are you certain?"

She nodded, and stood. "I've been stuck here for too long. I've had enough."

The Doctor followed her back to the library. Rose led him to the desk and sat down on one of the chairs. She gestured to the other chair, indicating that he should do the same. As they did, he asked her how she'd been fighting.

Rose pointed at the panel on her desk, which had the image of a hand pressed into it. When the Doctor merely nodded, Rose raised an eyebrow. "No long, elaborate scientific explanation?"

"There isn't one to give," the Doctor said abstrusely, "except that it must represent an access terminal through which you can regain control."

"Why would Eve of the Eternal put it here then?" she queried. "I'm supposed to be completely subdued, after all."

There was something in her tone of voice that made the Doctor stare at her in slight surprise, but he shook it off, and replied, "Eve of the Eternal didn't set it up. This access point exists because your connection with Eve of the Eternal is two-way. It's there whether Eve likes it or not."

He smirked, then added, "It was my friend Donna who figured out Eve's weakness, but you've been using it from the start."

"Explains a lot, actually," Rose said thoughtfully, and the Doctor nodded, before looking at Rose intensely.

"Now listen closely," he said urgently, "because this may be your greatest weapon. This is not the real world."

"I know it isn't," Rose interrupted, but the Doctor ignored her.

"This is the incongruent reality that exists only within your soul," he continued. "It is the world of your imagination, and therefore is subject to _your_ rules, not the rules of physical reality and logic that Eve of the Eternal follows. Eve can set up hallucinations--" He looked at the domed ceiling and the door that led to the balcony, "—elaborate hallucinations, judging by this place, but has no control over your thoughts or your subconscious."

He indicated the panel. "This terminal is the access point to self control, because _you_ made it so. Now, Eve of the Eternal is going to put up a fight. I'm here to keep its focus on me, so that instead of fighting it yourself, you'll be regaining control again."

He paused, and looked directly into Rose's eyes. "You _must_ focus on the real world, not what you may see or hear. Only then will you be able to defeat this computer."

Rose nodded, still looking determined. She placed her hand over the terminal. "Can you access this as well?" she asked.

"Your mind," he reminded her, "your realm, your rules."

He placed his hand over hers, and they looked at each other for another moment. Then Rose shut her eyes in deep concentration, and the Doctor gently placed their hands on the terminal.

Everything collapsed around them.

********

The library vanished, and instead Rose suddenly saw the shapes of trees all around her, but all was dark; everything was as black and cold as death itself. The path she stood on wound along a stream, here and there between the indifferent trees, further into the mist. Like Theseus's ball of string, the stream marked an easy path through the impassible labyrinth of misleading paths and mocking trees.

And so she began wandering down the twisting stream, further and further into the darkness, following the sound of running water.

Then all went deathly quietly, even the water, as a shape began to take form before her, like one of the ghosts from Canary Wharf. As she watched, the image came into focus, and she realized that she was looking at a mirror image of herself… only this other Rose had cybernetic implants attached to her face and scalp, and her expression was so cold and calculating that Rose found herself taking a step backward.

"It is futile to resist, Bad Wolf," Eve of the Eternal said quietly.

Rose blinked at the image, and at that moment the darkness thickened, until the forest faded completely, so that her other self was all there was to see. Rose shuddered, and shut her eyes, turning away from the captor, and allowing the darkness to envelop her. She could see nothing, again nothing.

"You are part of me, and I am part of you," the monotonous voice of Eve of the Eternal continued. "You tire, and you lose your focus. You cannot escape from me."

"Ignore it, Rose." A second voice spoke, like a quiet friend that led her away from Eve. In the distance, she thought she heard someone say, _"He sure is taking his time."_

A male voice responded, _"I thought I saw something there. Martha, did you see something?"_

"Return to your sanctuary," she heard Eve say, but the other voice interrupted.

"Leave her alone," it said angrily.

"_What is he doing in there, anyway?"_

Something prodded Rose toward the voices, some instinct that told her to follow them. The darkness seemed to lift, and finding strength again, she wandered in the direction she judged them to be.

So did she continue for some time, until a light appeared before her, and the voices grew louder. A warm feeling flowed through her, as though sunlight had fallen upon her.

"_Definitely saw something there."_

Rose walked quickly toward the light, but then the warmth suddenly began to ebb away. Rather than cold, however, she felt nothing except something firm on her shoulder. Looking down, Rose was horrified to see a metal hand resting there, holding her back.

Trying to free herself, Rose attempted to run, but the hand on her shoulder tightened its grip. Eve of the Eternal would not permit her to follow the voices.

"Oh no you don't!" the Doctor's voice snarled. "This is her mind, not yours! You have no right to it!"

The hand only gripped her shoulder more tightly, but then she felt something else, what she guessed to be a second hand trying to pry the mechanical one off her.

In the light, an image started to come into Rose's view, what looked like the blurred outline of a person with ginger hair.

"Rights are irrelevant," Eve of the Eternal argued coldly. "My purpose is to survive. It is useless to struggle."

But Eve's voice sounded oddly distorted, like a badly-tuned radio. Rose took this as a sign to continue resisting, and using all her strength, she tried to wrestle herself from the monster's grip. But its hand tightened, until intense agony shot through her shoulder.

At the same time, however, she could now clearly see Donna Noble in front of her, but every muscle in her body had become heavy, as though something had restrained them.

Then the Doctor spoke again, his voice low and dangerous. "You've picked the wrong enemy," he said. Rose immediately recognized that tone of voice: the merciless wrath of the Oncoming Storm that he had unleashed when the Krillitanes tapped hundreds of school children, when Cassandra had attempted to murder everyone on board Platform One, and when he faced the Dalek Emperor at the end of the Time War.

"I'm the Doctor," he hissed. "You have Rose's memories. What are they telling you about me?"

Eve of the Eternal stopped pulling on Rose's shoulder. It turned its attention to the Time Lord, and then it made the greatest mistake of its existence: it loosened its grip on Rose's shoulder. Rose knew that it would tighten again in a moment, but a moment was all she needed. She tore herself from Eve of the Eternal's influence, and suddenly she could feel the physical world, a sense that she had not truly had for ten thousand years.

A sensation of warmth filled her, not the mental warmth as she felt hope when the Doctor found her, but true, blunt, physical warmth, the heating of the infirmary. Feeling came back into her arms and legs and neck, and the impression that a great burden had been lifted from her came upon Rose. Where it had once taken enormous mental concentration, it now was very simple and easy for her to turn her head to the left, so that Jack Harkness came into view.

It was even easier for her to say, "Do it, Jack."

The last thing she heard before tumbling into darkness was the buzz of a sonic screwdriver.

********

Jack fell backwards into a chair as the entire Tardis lurched. The Doctor tumbled sideways to the floor next to Jack, who also saw Donna fall. Martha, on the other hand, managed to stay upright by clutching the examination table for support. Jack could hear glass shattering and saw a light fall from the ceiling and smash an inch from the Doctor's head.

The floor continued to tremble violently, but Jack made an effort to stand. "Won't be a minute!" he called as he stumbled out of the room. He gingerly crossed the short distance from the infirmary to the console room, where he could see the many pipes running from the ceiling to the console swaying back and forth, but there was no activity at the console; whatever was causing the tremor was outside, so Jack staggered to the doors and opened them.

It was the Void Ship. The truncated icosahedron's internal glow had returned, but this time, it was an angry red. It was shaking violently, and once again, it seemed to be pulling energy toward it, invisible energy, but Jack could feel some force being pulled away: it made his hair stand on end.

Several pieces of debris fell from the wrecked ceiling, which burned as they struck the Void Ship. Even as Jack watched, the red glow brightened into a hot white, and a sudden wave of heat washed over him. It was like stepping into an oven.

Then several of the pentagonal sides exploded outwards, and flames erupted from the remaining holes. The burning polyhedron seemed to sway toward the Tardis, and Jack took a step backwards, prepared to slam the doors shut.

But the Void Ship didn't roll over. With a blinding flash of light, it unleashed a second wave of energy as it imploded.

********

"What the _hell_ was that?" Martha shouted as the shaking stopped.

Nobody answered. Martha straightened and took a look around the infirmary, to see that the place was a wreck. Equipment and small tools littered the floor, and the glass from broken phials had scattered everywhere, leaving small puddles of various fluids. Donna and the Doctor lay on the floor close by, both groaning with pain and shock, and Jack was nowhere to be seen. The only other person who hadn't fallen to the floor was Rose, who was leaning forward heavily, her head hanging limply.

Seeing that Rose was about to fall out of the chair, Martha crossed the room, carefully avoiding broken glass and puddles of chemicals as she did, and pushed the former into a sitting position. Rose's face was still chalk white, but her eyes were shut, and dark rings were starting to form around them, so that she looked tired and ill. When Rose didn't move, Martha placed her fingers against her neck, feeling for a pulse. To her relief, she found a fast but healthy beat. Martha wasn't sure what had happened, but at least Rose had survived the ordeal.

As Donna sat up and moaned, clutching her head, Martha took a seat in the chair Jack had vacated, and scrutinized the Doctor's formerly dead companion curiously. After a minute, color started to return to Rose's face, and as her head rolled to the side, she let out a long groan.

The Doctor sat up abruptly at the sound and clambered to his feet as Jack entered the room.

"The Void Ship's gone," he announced as Donna stood too. "It must have self-destructed."

"Good," the Doctor said absently, his eyes on Rose; he clearly was not listening. Jack snorted with laughter.

"Actually, it is good," he said, and the Doctor looked up, looking perplexed as he realized what Jack had said. "That was technology way beyond anything I've ever seen, and the last thing I need is to deal with something _that_ dangerous, or for it to fall in UNIT's hands—no offense, Martha."

"None taken," Martha said, also looking slightly amused.

They all jumped when a faint voice groaned, "Oh God…"

Rose raised her head, and felt her forehead with her right hand before looking at them all in turn with bloodshot eyes. The Doctor instantly knelt in front of her, looking at her closely.

"How do you feel?" he asked.

Rose didn't answer immediately. She looked around again, and lifted her left arm to look at the mechanical hand. After flexing the metal fingers experimentally, she looked up.

"Almost normal," she said tiredly. Then she shook her head, and added, "I need a bed and a headache pill."

For the first time since they had found Rose on the Void Ship, the Doctor truly smiled. "Come on," he said gently. "Let's get you to bed. Tomorrow we'll do something about the implants. Should be easy, now that Eve's gone."

As the Doctor and Jack helped Rose stand, Donna asked curiously, "How much do you remember?"

A faraway look appeared in Rose's expression, and she stared off into space.

"Everything," she whispered.

********

**Wow. Part I is almost finished. I only have one chapter (possibly two, if I can't squeeze in all I want to wrap up) left to write, and then the chain of sequels to plan. Don't rest easy now that Rose is back; she's got a long road ahead of her, as does the Doctor. In the next chapter, that will become more apparent. Stay tuned for that. **

**Again, thanks for reading! **


	12. Chapter 11: The Awakening

Chapter 11

The Awakening

It was by habit the next morning that Martha woke up early. With a yawn, she turned over to look at the alarm clock on her bedside table, to see that it was six o'clock in the morning. Apparently UNIT's early hours had eliminated Martha's need for an alarm clock.

The first thing she became aware of as she sat up was that her stomach was growling, and suddenly Martha realized that she hadn't eaten since Jack had arrived at Torchwood Tower the day before. The events in the hours following, the danger and the stress, had tired everyone, and after calling work to take a few days off, Martha had gone straight to her old room in the Tardis, and collapsed on her bed.

She lay back in bed, and reflected on the events in the hours past. The day before, Martha had gotten up expecting another rather ordinary day working at UNIT, apart from the heavy rain. Now, she was back in the Tardis after helping to stop a black hole from consuming Earth, and suddenly her predecessor on the Tardis, Rose Tyler, had turned up alive but completely altered.

Her stomach grumbled again, and Martha slid out of bed with another yawn. After putting on a dressing gown, she quitted her room and made her way to the kitchen, where she was mildly surprised to see Donna seated at the table and sipping some coffee.

"Morning," Donna greeted as Martha entered.

"You're up early." Martha took a seat, and Donna put her cup down.

"Couldn't sleep," she muttered. "Yesterday was quite a long day."

Martha nodded in agreement. "Yeah. Explosions and Void Ships, dead Daleks… the Doctor's lifestyle is never going to change."

"Yeah. And Rose Tyler's suddenly alive."

Donna sipped her coffee again, and feeling a sudden need for something to do, Martha got up and started rummaging around the cupboards, carefully avoiding odd alien foods as she went, until she found some tea bags. As Martha proceeded to make some tea, Donna spoke up again.

"Rose must have been wiped out by that experience," Donna commented, "because I don't know how she can sleep with those implants otherwise."

Martha took a seat across the table from Donna, who yawned widely. Struck by a sudden thought, Martha asked, "What would you do, if you were suddenly ageless?"

Donna looked surprised by the question. "Why do you ask?"

Martha shrugged. "I dunno. Some people would sell their souls for it, but really, so many decisions are made when they are _because_ nobody lives forever. After traveling with the Doctor, I've come to the conclusion that it's for the best that our life spans are rather short."

Donna nodded. "Now that I think about it, I honestly don't know what I would do with myself."

They sat in silence for a long time, both deep in thought. Martha stood and removed the tea bag from her cup, then reached for the sugar bowl. After sweetening the tea to her taste, she sat down again, and took a long sip. After a few minutes, Donna drained her cup, and then put it in the sink before quitting the room, pausing only to say something about a shower. Left to her thoughts, Martha continued to drink her tea.

Until now, she, like everyone else, had believed that Rose had been killed at the Battle of Canary Wharf; to Martha, however, Rose was someone who the Doctor seemed to avoid talking about, and yet never stopped talking about. Everywhere they went, Martha was haunted by Rose Tyler's ghost, as the Doctor spoke of how brilliant she was, how she would always have known the answers, and even how young she'd made him feel. A dead woman had made Martha feel inadequate, but she never pressed the issue, instead opting to simply listen and sympathize. She, after all, had lost a cousin at Canary Wharf, and understood the Doctor's grief to some degree.

After the confrontation with the Family of Blood, the Doctor began to recover from his loss, and though he never forgot Rose, he began to accept her death, and started to treat Martha less like some replacement, and more like herself. But then Jack reappeared in the Doctor's life, angry that the Doctor had abandoned him in the year 200,100; he then demanded to know what had happened at Canary Wharf. Until the Doctor finally told Jack the story, Martha had had no idea how Rose had died. Once she learned the whole story, however, she suddenly was able to feel as much pity and horror for what must have been a terrible death, as she was able to feel empathy for the Doctor's grief.

For that reason, Martha could only feel happy for the Doctor that Rose had survived after all; but now she wondered what was now in store for Rose. Donna had a point: Martha wouldn't know how to live if she suddenly found herself unable to age. Humans were not meant to be ageless, otherwise they wouldn't really be human anymore; the experience with Richard Lazarus had taught Martha that. If Rose was still human enough to think along those lines, it would be no different for her.

********

Even five days later, the Tardis still hadn't moved from where the Doctor had parked it near the Cardiff Rift. Those five days were blissfully uneventful, a break from aliens and spaceships that everyone needed. Instead, the Doctor, Jack, Donna, and Martha spent most of the time catching up on old times, and getting acquainted, or reacquainted with Rose, although she spent most of the time resting.

The night they freed her from Eve of the Eternal, the Doctor had refused to leave Rose's side; Martha had found him snoozing on the bedside table the next morning after as she took pity on him and brought him some tea, the scent of which woke him.

"I wasn't asleep!" he said hastily as he sat up.

"Doctor, nobody's expecting you to spend the whole night watching Rose," Martha said reasonably. "Besides, if I were Rose, I wouldn't feel very comfortable with you scrutinizing me while I slept. I mean, that's as bad as Edward Cullen."

The Doctor's bewildered response had made Martha laugh loudly: "Who?"

In the ensuing conversation, the Doctor had offered to let Martha assist him that day as he removed the implants from Rose's face. Rose woke up shortly after this, and had soon declared herself well enough to have the microsurgery. It was a process that the Doctor described as rather simple really, but it took several hours due to the complexity of the junction between machine and flesh.

The operation was of great relief to Rose, who had said that the implants were extremely uncomfortable, a fact that nobody had difficulty believing. She spent the rest of the day asleep.

In her waking hours, Rose spent quite a bit of time getting to Martha and Donna, both of whom she took a quick liking to. With the Doctor or Jack sometimes present, the three women swapped stories about their travels on the Tardis; Rose especially enjoyed retelling what the Doctor had called the "Gas Mask Incident," something Jack had told Martha to ask Rose about.

The Doctor often visited Rose as she rested in her room, where they talked of many things, sometimes serious conversations with extra details about the battle with Eve of the Eternal, and sometimes pleasant conversations about former times traveling together.

After five days, Martha had received a phone call from Colonel Mace informing her that she soon would be needed back at work, and so that morning she had given her farewells and took a train back to London. Jack and Donna remained, although the former, who never seemed to truly have a break, would frequently spend time in the Torchwood Hub, monitoring the Rift.

Shortly after Martha;s departure, after telling Ianto to feed the Weevils, and a quick check on Tosh's old computer to make sure that the Rift was normal, Jack took the lift out of the Hub and through the perception filter. The Tardis was situated only feet away, and as soon as he stepped out of the perception filter, Jack crossed the short distance to the police box and entered.

A quick survey of the console room told Jack it was empty, so he quickly quitted it for the corridor. He slowly paced up and down the corridor for a moment, trying to think where the Doctor would be hiding, but then his thoughts were interrupted by a soft, hollow-sounding crack. Curious, Jack crossed the hallway and entered the library.

The Tardis library was always the neatest room in the ship; a tall room with towering bookshelves, filled with dozens of books. In one corner lay three sofas, each facing a television set, and in another, several soft armchairs and a coffee table. At first glance, the library appeared to be empty, but as Jack turned to leave, he noticed the Doctor and Rose in another corner by a pool table; they both saluted him as he approached.

"I see you're up and about," Jack said to Rose. As he spoke, she rubbed the bandages on her temple and cheek, marking where the implants once had been attached. She then picked up a cue from the table.

"I'm feeling much better this morning," she said, as she started to apply some chalk to the cue.

The Doctor smirked. "She got up and found me in the console room. I asked her what she wanted to do, and the first thing she says is, 'I want to play pool!'"

"And Donna's still in bed," Rose added, "so it's just us three."

The Doctor bent down and carefully positioned his cue. He fired, and a red ball bounced off the side of the table and rolled into a pocket.

"Good shot," Jack told him. Turning to Rose, he asked, "Good rest last night?"

She nodded. Turning to the Doctor, she told him, "I had the dream about the wolf and the scorpion again."

The Doctor looked at her, his expression thoughtful. "I don't suppose you're familiar with Jungian psychology, are you?"

"I know the theory," she said. "Taledrevan Void Ships were designed to assimilate as much information as possible wherever they land. Eve of the Eternal connected to the Internet the moment that ship landed."

"Absorbed the internet, more like." The Doctor scrutinized Rose, his expression one of great interest. "I was wondering when _you_ suddenly had extensive knowledge of T.S. Eliot."

Rose shot him a dirty look. "I've got the long cue, you know, and the temptation to whack you with it is very strong right now."

Unfazed, the Doctor grinned. "Anyway, sometimes in dreams, we see images that represent how we're feeling, what our situation is, or even who we are."

Rose nodded. "Jungian archetypes."

"When did you say that dream started?"

"Almost immediately after I crash-landed the Void Ship."

"Hmm." The Doctor watched as Rose bent over, and fired her cue; a ball with green stripes rolled into a corner pocket. "The wolf speaks for itself, and if that was your subconscious talking, maybe the cage was the prison. That means that the scorpion must have been the captor." He raised his eyebrows. "Funny thing, the subconscious."

Shaking his head with a small smile, the Doctor took his turn. This time, the green ball narrowly missed the pocket.

"So Rose, what are you going to do now?" Jack inquired her curiously. Rose looked at him thoughtfully, but didn't reply.

"You could always start again here," the Doctor offered. "You're more than welcome to continue on the Tardis with me and Donna."

Rose shifted her gaze from Jack to the Doctor, her expression unreadable, but in that moment, both men understood exactly what she had already decided.

"Doctor," Rose said hesitantly, "forgive me. I know I said I'd never leave you, but right now I don't feel ready." She turned away from him, and fixed her gaze on the 8 ball. "Please understand me: I was a virtual slave to a computer for ten thousand years, and as if that isn't enough, suddenly I can't age. What does that make me? During that time I'd forgotten who I am as Rose Tyler."

She paused, but the Doctor said nothing. He looked slightly disappointed, but unsurprised. Rose breathed in deeply, then looked up and met his eyes. "I need to rediscover myself," she said quietly, and he nodded. "I need to learn to handle my new lifespan, and it's just something I have to do on my own."

"Say no more," the Doctor said, his voice gentle. "I understand what you're saying, and I can't argue with it. So what are you going to do now?"

For the first time in five minutes, Rose smiled brightly. "Oh, just you watch me," she said ambiguously, as she bent down and took her turn. The cue ball struck a blue-striped ball, which rolled into another pocket. The Doctor made a loud exclamation.

"Oh, you're getting good!" he said in mock frustration.

Rose smirked. "I picked up a bit of trigonometry in the past ten thousand years."

"What else do you suddenly know, Rose?" Jack asked in amusement. Rose, however, didn't return the smile. Looking suddenly tired, she set her cue down.

"A lot more than I should," she said quietly. "When I say I remember everything during those ten thousand years, I mean _everything._ Eve of the Eternal knew everything about me the moment I was wired up to it. The transfer of information went both ways. I know almost everything you can know about the Helials and their science… and their ways."

Rose's voice trailed off, but the Doctor didn't miss the foreboding tone. "What are you saying?" he asked her, feeling suddenly wary.

Rose sat down in the chair behind her, and again looked at the pool table, her expression contemplative, as though she were considering how to answer. Then she sighed, and looked back at the Doctor.

"The Helials waded the Time War out inside the Void, but not because they were afraid to fight it." Rose watched as the Doctor positioned himself around the table to take his next shot, but she could see him listening intently. "On the contrary, they could have assisted the Time Lords, and judging from what I've seen, I think that the combined forces could easily have defeated the Daleks."

The Doctor nodded. "That's why the Time Lords sought help from them."

"But as far as the Helials were concerned, it was more in their interest to allow the Daleks and the Time Lords to destroy each other, and then take over what was left," the other reminded him. "The British empire times one billion is an apt description. Their actions during the Time War practically _defined_ 'divide and conquer.'"

She watched as the Doctor shot the cue ball, but she was no longer paying attention to the game. Rose looked at Jack, who was watching her intently, his expression suddenly serious as he realized what Rose was saying, but the Doctor didn't seem to have caught on yet.

"You know," she said thoughtfully, "the only thing that discouraged the Helials from invading our region of space was the presence of the Time Lords. They were ruthless imperialists, but they knew a lost cause when they saw one."

Rose stood, and slowly walked around the table, her eyes fixed on the cue ball. When she positioned herself for her next turn, she aimed her cue. Then, instead of firing, Rose straightened and looked at the Doctor intensely.

"Since the Time War is over and the Time Lords are no longer around to stop them…"

The Doctor put his cue down, and stared off into space, his expression one of sudden realization.

"… they will be coming," he finished.

Rose nodded. "It is not in their nature to forgo such an opportunity."

Nobody spoke. Even the background hum of the Tardis seemed to have quieted as the long, dark path before them became apparent, and the new age fell into perspective.

"Maybe Eve of the Eternal's actions were, in the long run, more beneficial than horrific," Jack said pensively.

Rose and the Doctor stared at him, and Jack hastily clarified, "That Void Ship was just a prelude for when the real thing comes. But this time we can be prepared for it."

The three of them fell completely silent, each to their own thoughts, but each suddenly realizing the truth of Jack's words. It was, after all, the difference between being caught unawares, and anticipating an event; because only then could the universe move on from the Time War.

As she realized where they now stood in the universe, Rose bent down and took her turn. Her sudden mastery of trigonometry served her well, and the last of the striped balls fell into a pocket, ending the game.

********

**I actually finished it. To me, that is amazing, because it's a first. I think this last scene is one of my favorites, so I enjoyed writing this chapter. At first, it was simply the Doctor speaking privately to Rose while she recovered from the surgery, but then I thought of this idea, and liked it better. The idea of the Doctor and Rose playing pool as they have this serious conversation popped into my head last Christmas when I was at a party at my Uncle Ray's house. He has a pool table, and that was were I discovered my liking of the game (which I had never played before). **

**If you were expecting the Doctor and Rose to instantly get together at the close of this story, I'm sorry if I disappointed you. But I think that being suddenly ageless would create more obstacles between then than it would eliminate. Rose therefore is going to go off for a while and do her own thing. Her first adventure after the Void ship is in the next story, which is called "**_**The Perennials II: Cypnov**_**." Keep an eye out for that; It's still being planned, but I may be able to start writing soon. **


	13. Author's Note

**Author's Note: **

**Here's a few fun facts about writing this story:**

**1. The fundamental idea behind Rose's state throughout "Eve of the Eternal" was inspired both by "The Stone Rose" and by the Star Trek episode "The Best of Both Worlds." **

**2. Originally, the story also featured Sarah Jane Smith and K-9, but in the end I couldn't really fit them in, so I cut them. They may appear in a later story. **

**3. The galaxy the Doctor tells Jack the Helials are from, MGC 13-7-2, is a real galaxy. It is 67,885,000 light years away, almost thirty times the distance between Earth and the Andromeda Galaxy. **

**4. In the original story, the builders of the Void ship were the Eternals, but after some development and a bit of research, that didn't really fit either. Then the idea of the Helials occurred to me, and I used them instead. **

**5. The Helials look humanoid, like Time Lords. **

**6. The White Guardian meant it when he said that there are more Time Lord survivors, so keep your eyes open in future stories. **

**7. Series 3 and 4 are almost exactly the same in "The Perennials" as they were in the show, but there are a few small differences. Assume that in Series 4, none of the talk of the missing planets happened (there's a reason for this). Adipose 3 was destroyed by a black hole (which is why they decided to "seed" Earth), and the Pyroviles at Pompeii were exiled from Pyrovilia. Also, in Series 3, I've always pictured that the Doctor lied to Martha about Rose at first, along with his lie about the Time Lords; he told Martha Rose was with her family, and finally admitted to her death during "Gridlock."**

**8. The way I picture it, the force of the open breach caused an interference that prevented Pete from hopping back to this universe and saving Rose. That's why she fell in the Void. **

**9. Jackie is probably going to appear at some point in the series. Believe me, it's not going to be pretty. ;) **

**10. "The Perennials" is meant to be a series, but the entire idea behind it stemmed from speculative conversation with my mother one day last summer while we were running errands. She helped with many of the ideas, so many thanks go to her.**

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**Again, thanks for reading! **


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